Soldiers and Politicians: Memoirs 9781487579562

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SOLDIERS AND POLITICIANS

The author when Chairman of the Canadian Joint Staff ;\lission \Vashington, I 943

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SOLDIERS and POLITICIANS •

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The Memoirs of Lt.-Gen. Maurice A. Pope C. B., M. C.

UNIVERSITY

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TORONTO PRESS

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© UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 1962 Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN 978-1-4875-8072-8 (paper)

TO MY CHILDREN

Preface

It was a balmy Ottawa morning in February, 1957, when I set about putting down a record of my life. It was not because I judged my career to have been of remarkable importance-any such thought could not have been farther from my mind. That I had led an interesting life, I think I could have justly claimed. But at the same time I was not unaware that whatever I might have accomplished could have been quite as well done by not less than a score of my friends and former associates of the Departments of National Defence and External Affairs. No, the reasons which led me to set out upon this course were varied, but they were of quite a different order. In the first place, when at long last the harness has been unbuckled, it seems natural enough that a man should feel inclined to leave some record that might prove of interest to those members of his family who come after him. There was, too, an idea in my mind that not withstanding some important recent additions, the field of Canadian biography still provided pretty thin graze to those who were interested in their country's history. Consequently, should my narrative and reflections contribute something of value to students of Canada's military and political development, then my effort would have been amply repaid. But this was not all. For the last twenty years or so, it seemed to me that I had done little more than to write appreciations, reports, memoranda, and dispatches by the furlong, and habit plays an important part in a man's life. If, as the French say, appetite comes with eating, it is not surprising that one should feel drawn to continue along the way one has followed for not less than a generation. Not only busmen feel disposed at times to take the proverbial holiday. This having been said, there remains for me to thank Colonel C. P. Stacey, formerly Director of the Historical Section of the General

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Preface

Staff at Army Headquarters, for his interest in my self-imposed task and for the verification of a number of points of fact regarding which I was in some doubt. To several of my former colleagues of the Department of External Affairs I am grateful for their encouragement when interest showed signs of flagging. It should hardly be necessary for me to add that any opinions I express are my own and for them I cheerfully bear all responsibility. And lastly, but by no means least, I cannot adequately express my thanks not only to the University of Toronto Press for having undertaken the task of bringing my book into production, but also to their Editor, Miss Francess G . Halpenny, for having so ruthlessly, yet in an ever so kindly manner, cut down my rambling manuscript to manageable proportions. As I look back over this work of the last year I am left with the inescapable conclusion that whatever merit may attach to the book which follows is at least as much hers as it may be mine. Rockcliffe Park, Ottawa, May, 1962

M.P.

Contents

Preface I

Early Days

vii

3

Civil Engineering

10

III

The Old War

23

IV

Peace-time Soldiering

48

V

Higher Staff Training

74

II

Imperial Defence

108

The Approaching Storm

123

World War II

137

The War Drags On

160

Canadian Joint Staff Mission, Washington

182

XI

Washington, Alaska, Quebec

XII

Ottawa, San Francisco, Paris

209 240

XIII

Berlin and Paris

291

XIV

Berlin and the Blockade

321

Bonn

366

Belgium and Luxembourg

387

Spain

415

Index

447

VI VII VIII IX X

xv XVI XVII

Illustrations

frontispiece

The author when Chairman of the Canadian Joint Staff Mission, Washington, 1943 between pages 18 and 19

The author with his grand uncle L.-A. Taschereau A post-war family reunion, Metis Beach, 1945 Canada-United States Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 1942 Canadian Joint Staff Mission, 1944 between pages 180 and 181

Heads of Allied Military Missions, Berlin, 1950 Basko and his master The author with "The Nut," Berlin, 1947 The ambassadorial life, Spain, 1954 Coronation dinner, Brussels, 1953 between pages 212 and 213

Canadian Embassy, Madrid The author presents his letter of credence, Madrid, 1953 Ceremonial drive, Madrid, 1953

SOLDIERS AND POLITICIANS

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CHAPTER

ONE

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Early Days

I was born at St. Patrick, a summering place in the parish of Riviere du Loup, in the County of Temiscouata, Quebec, on Thursday, August 29, 1889. The weather being fine, and it being late in the holiday season, I was baptized the same day, an occurrence not uncommon in those parts. I was the third child and son of Joseph Pope, who was at the time private secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald; he was later created a knight commander of the order of St. Michael and St. George, and ended his career as Canada's first Under Secretary of State for External Affairs. In his tum, my father was the son of William Henry Pope, who before Confederation had been Colonial Secretary of the little colony of Prince Edward Island and later county court judge at Summerside. It has always been for me a matter of satisfaction that my grandfather, who had been a member of the Island's delegation to the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences of 1864, was an ardent supporter of the idea of Union. I have among my papers copies of a letter or two he contributed in 1864 to the Charlottetown Islander in a controversy with the Island's Attorney-General, Edward Palmer, to whom confederation seems not to have appealed. The Island eventually joined the Dominion in 1873. A generation earlier my great grandfather, Joseph Pope, who sat in the Island Legislature for upwards of twenty years, had been one of a delegation which visited Canada to confer with Lord Durham on the subject of a federal union of the British North American colonies. My mother was Henriette, the eldest daughter of Sir Henri Thomas Taschereau who at the time of his death in 1908 was Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench of the Province of Quebec. My great grandfather, Joseph Pope, had come out to Prince Edward Island in 1819, while the first Taschereau arrived in Canada some time before

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the Conquest. His son or grandson, I am not sure which, sat in the first legislature to be established in Lower Canada. Thus it is that at times when I have found it impossible to be as nationalistic in my views on Canadian questions as are some ardent Native Sons of Canada I have been reassured by realizing that I have never needed to have any qualms about my Canadian status. My family spent many summers at St. Patrick to which little watering place my father had first been introduced by Sir John, who for many years had gone to the Lower St. Lawrence, hard by Riviere du Loup, to escape the summer heats of Ottawa. There before my first year was out, I achieved the uncommon distinction, which can have been shared by few of my compatriots, Grit or otherwise, of tweaking old John A.'s nose. Of course I do not remember the incident. Nor, to my regret, can I remember the old man himself, as my brother Edward does. On the whole my early life in Ottawa was happy and uneventful. I was one of a family of six children who were blessed in the best of parents. While we five brothers fought with each other, I suppose, about once a day we were, and still are, drawn to each other by ties of affection. Even with five lusty boys growing up together the maintenance of discipline within the family was no great problem. When we became too obstreperous the lot of us were thrashed in turn. This was the settled rule. No questions were asked and the treatment unquestionably did us good. My father had a high sense of duty and the calls of his office took first place in his mind. Moderate in all things, he had, apart from a keen interest in astronomy, few distractions. We older children always spoke French to our mother, a language with which my father never pretended to be conversant even though he could always follow the drift of a family discussion in that language. He often amused himself by parodying the French idiom and at times he would playfully tell us to "mount on high" when he judged the time had come for us to go to bed. My mother, who as a young girl had been brought up exclusively in the Province of Quebec, became fully bilingual within a short time after her marriage. I think it correct to say that she had also become bi-cultural. Never a blue-stocking, she could at one moment quote Sainte Beuve and at another refer appreciatively to something she had read, say, in Julia Cartwright's Madame: Memoirs of Princess

Early Days

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Henrietta, Daughter of Charles 1. Thus it was that in conversation within the family we would switch from a French to an English point of view effortlessly and, perhaps, even unconsciously. Brothers and sister naturally favoured our father's nationality and general outlook on life, but for my part I think I can say that, so far as my understanding permits, I am as sympathetic to French feeling as I am to English thought and that I can sincerely take either side in the perennial discussion as my fancy at the moment moves me. As the years passed my mother's circle of friends progressively became more and more English but I feel I am right in believing that her capacity to think as a French woman continued undiminished to the end. Although she took the keenest interest in politics, my mother strongly held that women by their very nature could have no useful part to play in public life. Their in8uence could be great, but it should be exerted discreetly in ways inherent to their sex. It thus followed that the questions of the day were a constant topic of conversation at table and after dinner. Although my father, a model of discretion, always refrained from discussing confidential matters by observing that this or that fell under the head of "public business," he freely related in our presence items of permissible gossip. Often he would tell of what his minister, the Secretary of State (for a long time Sir Richard Scott), had said of public questions in general. One of the liveliest of these questions was the Liberal Government's proposal to build the Transcontinental Railway; some critics believed it to be premature and Mr. A. G . Blair resigned as Minister of Railways and Canals in opposition to the Cabinet's decision to proceed with its arrangement to this end with the Grand Trunk Railway. I think my father judged the project venturesome; it was about this time that I heard him say that he was appalled by the fact that the National Debt amounted to some four hundred million dollars. We have progressed quite noticeably since that day. My parents used to see much of Sir Wilfrid and Lady Laurier, and we walked home from church with them every Sunday, and oftener than not spent that evening with them at what is now known as Laurier House. Even to us youngsters Sir Wilfrid was kind and gracious to a degree. We held him in affectionate admiration even though, so far as I was concerned then, I knew that I was not a Liberal. As I left home about the time I had reached my seventeenth birthday much of my father's thinking on men and things during the last

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twenty years of his life is unfamiliar to me, a disability under which I laboured when, after his death in 1926, it fell to me to complete his memoirs. But the encouragement to take an interest in national affairs and the tradition of the public service which we absorbed as part of our family life had, of course, an effect on me which grew stronger with each passing year. It is perhaps because I came to know prime ministers pretty early in life, added to the fact that I was brought up in Ottawa by a civil servant, that in later life I was never inclined to believe, as were some of my Service friends, that politicians and the machinery of government were obscure and unsolvable mysteries. Our family residence was in the Sandy Hill district of Ottawa and my first school was the one conducted by Miss Cherry Humphrys in that same section. It was small but seemed to be attended by a few little boys and by quite a bevy of young girls of the neighbourhood. My next school was L'Ecole Garneau, a separate school also situated in Sandy Hill. But my father, although Roman Catholic in faith, was not French, nor was he Irish. And so, after a month or so of French tuition, it was decided to send me to the Model School in Centre Town across the Rideau Canal. We thought a lot of ourselves at this school for our fees amounted to the considerable sum of two dollars a month, whereas others could attend the public schools for free. I had a number of excellent teachers at the Model School for it was well run with a good scholastic record, but I particularly remember our French teacher, a Monsieur Fleury, who turned up each day resplendent in a frock coat with a ribbon in his buttonhole. Poor M. Fleury! What a life we unruly boys led him! He would enter the classroom with mincing steps and bid us good morning with his inimitable French courtesy. Then the row would begin. M. Fleury was totally lacking in the power of command and by the end of the hour his composure would be quite gone. All this was nearly sixty years ago and he must long since have gone to his reward, which I pray has been felicitous. Perhaps the most exciting incident of these early days was the Ottawa-Hull fire of April 26, 1900. The fire began in Hull shortly before noon and did not spread across the Ottawa River until several hours later. About 1.30 P.M., as we were playing in the school grounds, the second Ottawa alarm was sounded, and we saw the fire-reels galloping westwards across the old wooden Maria Street (now Laurier Avenue) bridge. It was with the greatest reluctance that we obeyed

Early Days

7

Mr. Parlow, the headmaster, when he appeared to herd us into our classrooms. But at half-past three o'clock when we were dismissed there was a stampede of boys to the western section of the town. The blaze had spread with the pace of a prairie fire. At one moment, as I was standing about a hundred yards from the old waterworks pumping station near the junction of Sparks and Wellington streets, a burning shingle was borne by the wind and landed on the roof of a small frame house. Within a few minutes the building was in Hames and the watchers were forced to move to safety. Had the wind been from the west most of Ottawa would have gone, but as it was there was damage enough and thousands of people were made homeless. It was quite late when, still excited and supperless, I got home that night. A year or two earlier, with all the school children of Ottawa, I was paraded to Parliament Hill, waved my little Hag, and sang God Save the Queen and the Maple Leaf Forever on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Ottawa rejoices, and mourns, on Parliament Hill just as on great occasions Londoners flock to Buckingham Palace. It was the scene of another great gathering when Lord Strathcona's Horse were reviewed prior to their departure for the South African War. For a boy this was an impressive ceremony but amusing too for at one moment a burst of cheering caused the western horses to buck and prance with the result that several troopers were "piled" in the snow. In September, 1902, I passed on to the Collegiate, now known as the Lisgar Collegiate, without having taken the "Entrance" examination. The reason was a five weeks bout of typhoid fever which did me no harm but prevented me from sitting for the examination; however, the authorities judged that my work at the Model School had been fair enough to allow me to accompany my former schoolmates into high school. Here I spent four useful years. The Collegiate boasted of many classrooms and quite a large staff of teachers. Of these I remember especially John MacMillan, the Principal. A rugged Scot of great strength of character, "Old Mac" was a born teacher and an excellent disciplinarian, and his shining honesty instilled into my youthful mind an admiration for the human qualities of the Scottish people which I retain to this day. As I look back on my boyhood it seems to have been full of activity of a vigorous but not very dramatic kind. The seasons came and passed, and in their tum we met with measles, mumps, and whooping

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cough. We played baseball and football in the Spring and Fall. I used to run with the Ottawa Harriers and still have several spoons won when my team was successful in the last runs of the season. One year I was more than proud to have several older men including D'Arcy Finn, then sporting editor of the Citizen, as a member of my team. Our Saturday afternoon chases were always started by old Mr. W. F. Boardman with his enormous pistol. Among our keenest members were Major A. C. Morrison-Bell and Major "Joe" Maude of Government House. The latter was later to gain great distinction as the successful Commander-in-Chief in the Mesopotamian Campaign of the first Great War. I played cricket, too, at the Rideau Hall grounds for several seasons. It has always interested me when, on my return from an extended sojourn abroad, my friends have asked me if I did not notice great changes in Ottawa. That the town had grown was obvious enough, but growth does not always bring with it a change in atmosphere. Ottawa is not large, and the general picture it presents today seems to me to be pretty much the same as it has always been. Of course, the old Sappers' bridge has given way to Connaught Place. But Parliament Hill looks much as it did in the nineties. The raw red brick of Victorian Sandy Hill has not mellowed with the years, and Rideau Street still does not rival the Strand. True, the town has developed to the south and west, but I can only observe that to those of us who lived as youngsters to the east of the Canal, the Glebe and its environs were always pretty much terra incognita. On the other hand, there have been marked changes in the mode and tempo of life. During my childhood there were domestic servants for even those of quite moderate means, and families were accustomed to sit down to meals served by others. Sandwiches were made to be included in the picnic hamper, or else bought at a railway restaurant counter. They had not yet become a staple article of diet. Our homes were lit by gas, and in each drawing-room there stood a prettily shaded coal-oil lamp that needed to be trimmed each morning lest it smoke and smell that evening. Ladies had their days "At Home," when they would receive visitors at the tea hour. Even at St. Patrick formal visits were paid, and returned, by the ladies of the cottages. In those days visiting cards were not sent by post. On the contrary, they were brought by handany hand save that of the postman. Not a few citizens donned mom-

Early Days

9

ing coats and top hats of a Sunday morning. Even the sight of a frock coat was not uncommon. The community took its pleasures in a simpler manner than it does today. On a warm afternoon or evening, refreshment was often sought in a five-cent street-car ride to Britannia. Friends frequently visited each other for an evening's quiet conversation which was then fostered and not impatiently frowned upon as it is so often today. Bridge, or whist, was a relaxation rather than a passion. Of course, there was the infliction of crowded and cacophonous "teas," which today have been succeeded by the cocktail party, the only merit of which would seem to be that now exhilaration is possible if it be desired to escape the inevitable boredom. A striking instance of the change in the course of a lifetime in general social attitudes is given by an anecdote once told me by my father. During the late afternoon of the general election of 1887, a mere two years before I came into the world, old Sir Richard Cartwright was driven in his carriage and pair by his booted and breeched coachman to a polling booth on the outskirts of Kingston, and in his stentorian voice called out to the returning officer, "Has my tenantry yet voted?" Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of the old life at St. Patrick. To me the south shore of the Lower St. Lawrence with its long white line of glimmering villages, its fine skies and refreshing salt air, its broad expanse of blue water extending to the distant Laurentians beyond, and the sheer and vivid beauty of its sunsets, has always been especially dear. And now that my wanderings are ended and I begin to have "some smack of age in me," I rejoice in the fact that I may henceforth spend my remaining summers en bas, away from the inland heats in the cool of friendly and familiar surroundings. There I can fish in the brook with my grandchildren as I did as a boy, and in the lakes as well with my contemporaries, for that finest of game fish our Eastern speckled trout (Salvelinus fontinalis, which by the way is not a trout but a char, but what matter), and watch the sea and shore birds busily going about their affairs with the osprey diving for the luckless Rounder. There I can live for a while among a happy and contented people to whom I am kin, and reflect that all is well with at least a small portion of this restless world.

Civil Engineering

The first decade of the present century, in which I reached early manhood, was a notable period of physical expansion in Canada. The building of the Grand Trunk Pacific was in full swing, and Messrs. McKenzie and Mann were busy in Ontario and in the West. Everywhere there was talk of "construction." Daily one met with friends and acquaintances who had just come to town with bursting bank rolls, from a spell "on the line" up North. On all sides there was a call for engineers. Immigration, too, was surging across the Atlantic towards North America and Canada was getting her fair share. In such circumstances it is not surprising that the mind of the Canadian youth of fifty years ago should be drawn to engineering. The pay was good and when one was up North one could not spend but only save one's money. I did not escape the infection, and so, when I entered McGill in September, 1906, I put down my name for the civil engineering branch of the Faculty of Science. Just why I chose "civil" I am not too clear. It may have been because I have never liked oil and waste, and this was enough to make mechanical engineering distasteful to me. Mining seemed to be too much of a gamble and I am not a gambler, that is to say, I have never played for stakes I could not afford to lose. Electricity struck me as being too much of a specialty, and a mysterious one at that. This option for science pure and simple I was later to regret, for as I grew older more and more I began to feel the lack of a familiarity with the classics which so many generations of Europeans, of all races, have held to be the basis of a sound education. That a majority of my countrymen think differently, I know only too well and the reason is obvious. Our fathers were confronted in the New World with the gigantic task of subjecting nature to their requirements, a task which even today is far from finished. It was a full-time job and

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as a consequence some of the higher and finer activities of the mind were crowded out by an all-pervading spirit of materialism. Our lives, and our country as well, are the poorer to that extent. I well remember Dean Moyse, of the McGill Faculty of Arts, standing on a table in the midst of a noisy Union smoker and affirming with clenched fist that while the humanities might not command dollars, their study was something one could feel to one's great advantage. I am sure that in this Moyse was as right as a man can be. As Grattan O'Leary has recently put it, "Civilization is more than superior plumbing." Revisiting my old college haunts today, I find the McGill scene much as it was when I was an undergraduate. There are new buildings and a fine new stadium, and the number of students has quadrupled, if not more, but the campus has the same appearance and the faces of the present-day youth sauntering up to their lectures do not seem to have changed. There may be more dormitory space now available, but the bulk of the men still live in the same rooms that in my time were for rent within the half-mile radius or so of the university grounds. I did not have a room myself actually, for I lived with my grandfather Taschereau on Sherbrooke Street, just west of Bleury, for my first two years. In those days the Science faculty enjoyed a good reputation. Facilities were adequate and the teaching staff more than so. Henry Martin McKay was our professor of civil engineering and Ernest Brown his principal assistant. The course was no sinecure for we had three or four lectures to sit through each morning, followed by a three-hour laboratory, draughting-room, or workshop period after lunch. Saturday mornings were devoted to practical work. As we did not have more than one or two "spares" in our lecture time-table we put in a full thirty-five hour week. But we were all interested and happy in our work. The students were certainly a hard-boiled crowd of young men. It was their established rule that a lecture should not exceed fifty minutes in length; it should begin five minutes after the hour and should end five minutes before the hour. The unfortunate lecturer who so forgot himself as to continue beyond the deadline found himself obliged to struggle against the noisy closing of note-books, much scraping of feet, and a barrage of unstifled yawns. But we appreciated excellence. I remember Ernie Brown once brilliantly reviewing a term's course in mechanics, consisting of about a dozen theorems each

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deriving from the one which had preceded it, within the space of the laid-down fifty minutes. We cheered him our congratulations. Dean Adams' course in geology was most popular, and for other reasons than because it was the sole occasion on which we took classes with the young ladies of the Royal Victoria College. But university life was not all a grind. I was too light at the start for football-in my first year I only weighed 122 pounds-and so I chose running, but I never achieved much success either on the track or cross-country. In my last year, having by then picked up a bit in weight, I turned out with the football squad. This I much enjoyed. We practised assiduously but I imagine the seniors could not have "hit the line" as hard in practice as they did in their matches. In any event, I do not remember ever having been hurt or even noticeably bruised. In my first term I further rounded out my college life by joining a fraternity. I could never quite understand, and I certainly could not agree with, the criticism so often directed against college fraternities as such. With us, while the older members encouraged us actively to take part in games, they did not look with too kindly an eye on those who failed to keep up with their work. After all, a man's capacity for friendship is limited, and to find oneself intimately associated with some thirty or so kindred souls amid many hundreds of others should satisfy most reasonable men's appetites. But the undergraduate body as a whole seemed to look upon us with suspicion. This, I think, sprang from an exaggerated idea that anything approaching exclusiveness is in itself undemocratic, and that every man should be shaped in precisely the same mould. What a dull and uninteresting and in a way even unfree world, this would bring about! My fraternity quietly went its own way, enjoying good fellowship and letting itself go at Saturday-night chapter meetings. Few of us had any money. For my first two years my allowance was ten dollars a month, and during the last two, fifteen. Of this, three dollars went for fraternity dues and two to the Chinaman who did our washing at a flat rate and who himself decided what needed washing and what did not. With what was left we indulged in a glass of beer at six o'clock in the afternoon, followed by a game of five-cent poker between seven and eight before we went up to our rooms to study. We could not afford to splash around in expensive restaurants but with a keg of beer, biscuits and cheese, then costing us about fifteen

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or twenty cents a head, we could and did have a lot of simple and wholesome fun . The occasional setback is an inescapable rule of life, and my university career proved to be no exception. I was not conscious of having slacked during my second year but when the examination results were posted that May, I was chagrined to learn that I had failed in six subjects. This meant that I should have to present myself for, and pass, the supplementary examinations the following September before being allowed to go on to my third year. As I had a summer job awaiting me, this seemed to be a bit much to tackle so I decided to spend a year out of college and to take my "sups" piece-meal. The failure turned out to my advantage for I had come up to McGill only a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday and this was altogether too young. Years later, in the Army, we were taught that ground gained should be consolidated before any attempt at a further advance be made. It is a wise admonition. And so, I have ever since felt that a boy, if he be on the young side, would do well to consider repeating his last year at high school before going on to his university. I know, of course, that it is not given to many to be able to afford such a luxury. In those days, and I am sure it is the same today, we worked during our summer holidays, not only to help pay our way but also to acquire practical experience. For my part, I began quite early. In the summer of 1905, I found myself a job as one of a hydrographic party on the Georgian Bay Canal survey. When I was two months short of sixteen, towards the end of June, I travelled north and joined my party at Eau Claire on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway about midway between Mattawa and North Bay. Actually, our main headquarters were at Lake Talon, the headwaters of the Mattawa River. Here I spent some six pleasant and profitable weeks; we were a giltedged survey and I was paid the princely sum of three dollars a day "and found," more than I was able to earn for my first year or two after graduation. We spent our days by the side of forest and stream in a country showing hardly a blemish. Once we worked through a stand of virgin pine that was as clear of underbrush as a park, and a magnificent sight. The fishing, too, was exciting. But I remember once being told by an old chief of party not to let the bush get too deeply into my blood, for if it did I should never again be able to settle down to city life.

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The following summers of 1906 and 1907, I worked on the construction of the docks on the Louise Embankment at Quebec. I had therefore a little experience behind me when, in the spring of 1908, I got a job on the Trent Valley Canal at Frankford, in the fair county of Hastings. Here I stayed some fifteen months, for fifty dollars a month and "board yourself." We were, however, able to find free living quarters in an empty house on the canal right-of-way. The work consisted of laying out and supervising the construction of such things as dams, locks, and core-walls to prevent seepage where the water in the canal was to be higher than the original ground level. My job as rodman, an interesting one which I much enjoyed, had been obtained for me by my father from Mr. R. M. Butler, then Deputy Minister of the Department of Railways and Canals. At the time I had some reason to think that Butler felt he had been prevailed upon to give a job to a soft young man. In any event, one day later on that summer as he was making a tour of inspection of our area, he came across the resident engineer, Stuart Lazier, and his staff placing small oaken hubs in the floor of the lock-pit to serve as guides for the laying of the mitre sills. Lazier was superintending the work; a chap named O'Rourke from Trenton was looking on; old John Macdonald (a red-hot Grit, by the way), our axeman, was swinging a maul; the rodman, dressed in khaki duck shirt and trousers, with a red bandanna handkerchief about his neck, for it was warm and the Hies were bad, was sitting on a Hat rock with his seat an inch or so above the seepage water which covered the lock-pit floor, and manipulating the drill at which old John was banging away. With each blow of the maul there was a splash of a soupy mixture of rock dust and water which had the rodman looking as if he had gone through the mixer with a batch of concrete. On his return to Ottawa, Mr. Butler gave me a good report. What a delectable part of Canada is the Orange County of Hastings! Even in those days it bore a well-established air. The farms were well managed, the orchards gave a good cash yield, and the people were prosperous. Indeed, I remember one family each member of which-parents, son, and daughter-drove into "town" (the village of Frankford) of a Saturday evening in a separate well-upholstered rubber-tyred buggy. They were a fine upstanding people and their men drank their whisky neat.

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There were a few old retired men in the village who so far as I could make out spent their mornings impatiently awaiting the one o'clock Central Ontario Railway train from Trenton. It brought a batch of the Toronto Globe and the Mail and Empire and my old friends spent their afternoons reading the newspaper of their own political affiliation from end to end and inwardly digesting what they had read. Then in the evenings they would gather round the cracker barrel, or in winter, the station agent's stove, and sometimes with a measure of belligerence, discuss the issues of the day. Knowledge may not have been as diffused in those days as it is now but what came to these old men's attention they knew thoroughly. They did not content themselves with a hasty scanning of the headlines, but carefully read each news item or article and pondered over it. They had developed a racy philosophy of life-and there can be no finer. I learned much from these old men, and not least, that the urban centres do not invariably enjoy a monopoly of wisdom. Or again, as Owen Wister once put it in The Virginian: "The creature we call a gentleman lies deep in the hearts of thousands that are born without a chance to master the outward graces of the type." As can be imagined, a settled community in central Ontario in those days was fairly bursting with "characters." There was "Doc" Simmons, a local practitioner, who differed from Dave Hamm only in that he was a medical man and not a private banker. The Doc, who loved good horse-Resh, had an office-dispensary which defies description. I can say, however, that the slab of heavy glass on which he compounded his salves and ointments reminded me strongly of an artist's well-used palette. Lazier and I were much amused when the Doctor described to us in great detail how he had looked after one of the contractors' foremen who had been badly injured by a premature dynamite explosion, and ended by saying, with an arch look on his face, that he had dressed the wounds an-ti-sep-ti-ca-lly! There was a humbler member of the community named "Gillie" Sharp, of whom I was most fond. Poor Gillie had not known much success in life, possibly because of a weakness for fishing, and for other things as well. How he lived I never quite knew and I was often moved of a cold winter's night to offer him a warming drink, for I had a feeling that the old chap bunked down in a barn. Gillie, who was about the hotel every night, dearly loved an argument no matter what

16

Soldiers and Politicians

the subject might be. When someone was having the better of him he would grow very angry and exclaim "Woe be he!"-followed by other expressions I may not print. Then there was Aeneas McCallister, the blacksmith, who hailed from Ulster, though he used to admit that he was only 12)~ per cent Irish, the rest being Scotch. He firmly believed that the old Queen's birthday should be fittingly celebrated and he would start the 24th by placing a good-sized tin of gun powder on one anvil, covering the charge with another, and touching the whole business off with the red-hot end of a long poker. The resulting "boom" had the village awake for the rest of the day. In the summer the local band used to stage an occasional train excursion down to Consecon, in Prince Edward County, where the company would dance for a few hours and get back to Frankford late the same night. On one of these occasions I had a dance (it was then that I first listened to the strains of "The Mocking Bird") with a young girl who was as sweet and charming of manner as she was good to look upon. In the course of our chat this young lady told me that she was shortly to go "clurkin at Eaton's." Several months later I was saddened to read in a Toronto paper that she had been found dead of a dose of poison. The tragedy made me wonder if there was not something strangely amiss with our outlook on life and the values being inculcated in the minds of young people. That there should be a measure of drift from the country to the city I suppose is as inevitable as it is natural, but how and why young women's minds should be so turned as to prefer a rather drab life behind a ribbon counter and a cheerless room in a cheap boarding house, as opposed to a healthful and wholesome life as a young farmer's wife in an open and smiling countryside, I could never quite understand. I followed with much interest the campaign for the federal general election of 1908 in which the Conservatives under R. L. Borden contended unsuccessfully against the Laurier Government. Hastings County was overwhelmingly Conservative, and one night there was a big meeting in Sweetman's Hall for which quite a party of big wigs came up from Belleville, among them Gus Porter, the sitting member, and Sir McKenzie Bowell, then still hale and hearty. The old man in reply to a question ascribed his longevity to "A good Tory conscience," which of course brought down the house. About this time, too, I witnessed a local option campaign during the course of

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which the "Temperance" people brought in a professional spellbinder whose antics before an earnest and righteous audience were as good as a burlesque show. The "Drys" won and in doing so broke poor Charlie Rose's heart for it was enough to put Rose's hotel, where we boarded, pretty well out of business. Earlier I have referred to the "Orange" County of Hastings, and so indeed it was. But the relations between the Irish and the others were, on the whole, quite good. Old William Pettit, the licence inspector and master of the local Orange lodge, used to come round to the hotel most evenings a little before closing time, and on the odd occasion condemn the "Hierarchy of the Catholic Church." But that was only patter. Up North, about Maynooth, I was told that general elections were often fought on a battle cry of "To Hell with the Pope"; this while somewhat uncharitable did not seem to do anyone much harm, least of all His Holiness. I was told by one of my crew that on a 12th of July not long since, the Orangemen had rallied at Trenton. They had their "business" meeting in the morning when the Catholic Church came in for its usual hammering, but at the sports held that afternoon as many events were won by the "Micks" as by the True Blues. My friend added that the whole lot of them got drunk together that night and that there were no fights! I quitted the Canal at the end of July, 1909, and went to Montreal to prepare for my last two or three supplementary examinations. But on my way back to McGill I journeyed towards London, Ont., to spend a week-end with my brother Billy who several years previously had joined the Permanent Force. At the time my mind was turning towards the idea of entering the Army but the listlessness of Wolseley Barracks in peace-time temporarily drove any such idea from my mind. The remainder of my time at McGill requires little comment, for while it was enjoyable it was uneventful. In the summer of 1910, I worked for a firm of contractors on a major extension to a building on Ste Catherine Street, between University and Victoria streets (now occupied by Eaton's). There I gained some experience in foundation work but more, perhaps, in the management of an unruly gang of teamsters. My last term in the winter and early spring of 1911 was a grind and a nervous one at that, for there was ever present in my mind the fear that I might fail. But the results were not unfavourable, and I went off cheerfully to spend the summer of 1911 on the Lower St. Lawrence at St. Patrick and later at Ste Irenee

18

Soldiers and Politicians

near Murray Bay. It was a good rest and I have often looked hack to it, especially to the fine days which September often brings down river. I had however to get myself a job. I made an unsuccessful try to join a dam project in Alberta and then obtained employment with the Maintenance of Way department of the Canadian Pacific Railway. With the Company I spent three and one-half well-filled years. My first assignment was to serve as a rodman on the conversion of the bridge at Highlands (a mile or two below Lachine) from single to double track. Here I seemed to spend most of my time marking out alignments on the piers which had been extended up-stream so as to take the required second steel structure. The steel workers aloft, a gang of Caughnawauga Indians with a head for height, unceasingly chewed tobacco, and working below them was consequently a hit trying. During this time the Reciprocity election campaign of 1911 was in full swing. English-speaking Montreal had never struck me as being politically minded, save perhaps that the manufacturers were always clamouring for greater tariff protection. But Champ Clark's tactless utterance in Washington about our country being at the parting of the ways from Britain, coupled with Clifford Sifton's strong speeches in defection from the Liberal party which had proposed reciprocity with the United States, greatly stirred public opinion. For a while the result was in doubt for Sir Wilfrid Laurier's magnetism still seemed to weave its powerful spell. But when, one night, at the close of a performance at Bennet's vaudeville theatre the audience remained standing in their places and with great fervour sang God Save the King, I felt that the voters had judged that Reciprocity, at least in the form in which it had been presented to them, was unacceptable. Throughout the day of the 21st of September, I worked at Highlands in a dither of excitement. As soon as I could manage it I caught a train back to Windsor Street and gulped a hasty dinner at my boarding house on Dorchester Street, more or less opposite the St. James Club. As I hurried across Dominion Square to the Star bulletin boards at the comer of Windsor and Ste Catherine streets the crowd was giving vent to cheer after cheer as the results from the Maritimes began to come in. It was raining and we were soon soaking wet, hut nothing could dampen our spirits. Reports of the landslide kept coming

The author with his grand uncle L.-A. Taschereau. Premier of Quebec, Spencerwood, 193-+

t\ post-war family reunion , :''1etis Beach, I 9-+5 From left to right: Tom, Harrv, nw wife. self, Joe. Sinwnnc

Canada-United States Permanent Joint Boa rd on Defonce, Gracie 1\lansion , N ew York , 19-12 Bach row, standing , left to right : Lt.-Col. J. H. Jenkins; Hear Admiral G . C . Jones; Capt. F. P. Thomas; Croup Capt. F. V. Heakes; J. I). l lickerson; I I. L. Keenleyside front rnw, seated , left to right: The author, 0. i\J. Biggar, Mayor r . 11. La Guardia, Lt. -Gen. S. D . Embick, Capt. F. D. Wagner Ca nadian Joint Staff i\'1ission, Vilashirwton, 19-1-1 from left io right : Lt.-Col. L. T. Loll'~1cr ( Secretary), /\ir Vice ,\Lrrsli.d (;. V. \\' alsh. the author, Hear Admiral H. E. Heid

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in hour by hour and the excitement was great. Elsewhere my father has told of his having lost his voice cheering John A.'s great victory in 1878.* In not dissimilar circumstances I lost mine on the night of the 21st of September, 1911. But all the while I could not help feeling sorry for poor Sir Wilfrid. After a few weeks at Highlands I was transferred to the office of the district engineer, Montreal terminals. Our quarters were in some old houses hard by the Place Viger station. In the transfer my pay was increased from fifty to sixty dollars a month on which, with care, I could live. Here I learned about track work: cuts and fills, ties and the laying of steel, and switches, the latter giving me many a headache as I tried to work out the correct angles. In 1912, we moved to new offices in Windsor Street station and I was put in charge of the very considerable extension then being made to the Glen passenger yard at Westmount. I spent many a hot day in the Glen yard-and cold ones, too. All kinds of jobs fell to me. One season we doubled the length of the masonry arch which carried the main line over the Glen itself. I was much impressed by the work of the stonemasons, who today seem to be a vanishing race. Then at the western end of the yard we put in the Decarie Avenue subway. In those days the Company seemed invariably to accept the lowest tender for a job of work and in this case the favoured contractor's bid was a good deal lower than those of his competitors. In fairness to the C.P.R., however, I should add that they had no wish to see their contractors lose money and, as we met with a very tough hard-pan in the excavation, a grant in aid was made to the contractor in the form of a re-classification of some of the material from common earth to a higher-priced category. The sub-contractor for this work was an old Jew named Sibley who was a very good fellow indeed. He seemed to have a sideline up North buying furs and occasionally on his return from a trip up Ste Agathe way, he would bring me a brace of partridge. The Sibley son introduced me to an expression which formed an essential part of the lingo on the construction of the transcontinental railway. One day, when a piece of machinery had failed and no spare part was available, the operator threw in his hand. Exclaiming, "You can't build a railroad without hay-wire," young Sibley stripped a bale of hay of its containing wire and quickly effected the needed repair. "Public Servant (Toronto, 1960), p. 27.

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Years later, I ran across Miss Margaret Schloss's Gift of Tongues, in which the authoress remarked that the origin of the expression "haywire" appeared to be obscure. I sent her a possible explanation. Up North on construction, spare parts were usually not to be had, but as work was largely dependent on horse power, baled hay and consequently hay-wire were always at hand. The wire was often used for temporary repairs; needless to say these were anything but conventional in appearance and so any object that looked askew came to . " be "h ay-wire. With the yardmen at Westmount I had little direct contact, though they were shifting coaches and making up trains about me all day long. Their work was both arduous and dangerous. They put in a long twelve-hour day in all weathers, and in order to get each alternate Sunday off they had once a fortnight to work twice round the clock without a break. They were a crew of "toughies" but they were none the less good fellows for that and C.P.R. discipline was really magnificent. Old David MacNicoll, the general manager, lived at that time in the west end and often he would get out of his car at Decarie Avenue and walk down through the yard to Westmount station where he would resume his drive to his office. Keeping out of trouble was a watchword in the C.P.R. as well as elsewhere, and the yardmen, I used to think, must have had an extra pair of eyes in the backs of their heads so quick were they to spot the old boy coming from afar. I invariably failed to do so but when I saw the men ducking under, or between, the passenger coaches, for all the world like a colony of rabbits making for the security of their burrows, I knew that something was afoot and that I had better watch my step. Actually, the old man seemed to be interested only in the operational side of things for he always ignored me, something which displeased me not at all. One day as he was passing by, I overheard him say with great emphasis as he smacked his fist into the open palm of his other hand, "I'll no gie a dollar for fufty cents." The sound financial policy of the C.P.R. was obviously still in sure hands. Midway between Westmount and, say, Windsor Street, was Atwater Park and when I could get away at about five o'clock I would take in the ball game. A spot of baseball before dinner was indeed not unlike an aperitif. I ·got to know a fair number of the game's old-time "greats." I have seen "Iron man" McGinnity pitch

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a full game; Bill Bradley, formerly a star with Cleveland, cavorting about third base; the famous Rube Waddell, in whose hands the ball seemed to be alive when he was fooling to amuse the stands; Malachi Kittredge, Dummy Taylor, Natty Nattress, and a host of others. Of course, these players were on their way down from the big leagues, though I remember Dicky Rudolph, then playing with Toronto, on his way up. A red-letter day in my memory is one in 1913, when, in New York on a visit, I saw Christy Mathewson pitching New York to victory over Pittsburg, on which team old bow-legged Honus Wagner, with hands as big as hams, covered the ground of two men from the shortstop position . .,A ?art from baseball, my recreation consisted of an occasional theatre, including the opera, a game of bridge, and on week-ends a walk round the mountain, when we invariably stopped at Tony Lumpkin's for a beer, and sometimes more than one. And there was a week-end in June 1914, which I spent at Quebec, that always stands out in my memory. First, there was the magnificent plain chant at the old Basilica. Then, a few hours previously, the Empress of Ireland, which I had known so well during my summers on the Louise Embankment, had been rammed and sunk off Father Point with a loss of some 1700 lives. This cast gloom over the city and countryside. That evening I supped with Mr. and Mrs. George Parmelee and their daughters whom I had known for years at St. Patrick. There was also present a young German who, I gathered, had a job of some sort in the vicinity. After supper there was music, the German playing his violin to the accompaniment of Miss Mabel (now Mrs. Victor Tremaine). I vaguely remember that he highhatted me during the evening, but in any case as I had no music in me I sat at the far end of the drawing-room talking with Mrs. Parmelee. The next time I saw this musician was in 1946, when he was sitting in the dock as No. 2 accused at Nuremberg. His nameJoachim von Ribbentrop. Those of us who tried to follow the course of international affairs in these years were increasingly aware of the growing military power of Germany, and of the unsettled state of southeastern Europe. I remember the headlines in the press to the effect that "war clouds were looming in the Balkans." Indeed, the clouds actually broke but Greece and Bulgaria seemed very far away. Public opinion was not unduly perturbed, except about whether or not Canada should con-

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tribute to the Royal Navy in the form of dreadnoughts. The country was prosperous and the work of development was continuing apace. Most young men seemed to have only their careers and their pastimes to concern them. Then the assassinations at Serajevo set in motion a train of events which effectively closed the nineteenth century, and also ended a more graceful and settled way of life than we know today. For most of those my age there was now only one purpose.

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e

CHAPTER

THREE

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•

The Old War

It was an excited group of young bucks who on the evening of Friday, August 1, 1914, assembled at the Bonaventure station to board the Intercolonial Railway's St. Lawrence Special en route to a week-end down river. During the previous ten days or so international tension had been steadily rising. Mobilization had been met by countermobilization. Europe was setting out to destroy herself. Canadians were following the unfolding events with keen interest for they knew only too well that the decisions being taken overseas would, inescapably, be of direct concern to them. With the increasing gravity of the situation came an upsurge of patriotic feeling, and on the station platform one of my companions declared with great spirit, "If war comes, I shall go." As usual, the week-end at St. Patrick was most pleasant. The weather was fine, the air invigorating, and the water cold. On the Saturday evening there was a bonfire on the beach. A young lady joined us later, saying that she had just had a telephone call from her fiance to the effect that his Permanent Force unit had been ordered to proceed forthwith from Petawawa to a place named Valcartier, near Quebec, where a new military camp was to be established. The unit was to form part of a contingent to be dispatched overseas. The young lady was perturbed, naturally enough, and expressed the hope that the war would be over before our troops had reached England. I felt she should not be too optimistic on this score, for I was mindful of the great strength of the probable adversaries and thought the war might well continue for as long as five years. In the event I was proved not far wrong. Returning to Montreal on the Monday morning, I worked at the Glen for a few hours. In town for lunch I went straight to the Star bulletin boards and there learned that the die had indeed been cast.

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Rarely have I been so moved as I was when I read those fateful words. Having been brought up by one who had instilled into my boyish, and later my youthful, mind that the county of Carleton in Ontario was as much a part of the King's dominions as was the county of Surrey, I realized that a great hour had struck, and I resolved to do whatever lay in me to help the Mother Country in her hour of need. As the idea will recur, I repeat that my feeling at the time was one of obligation to help the Mother Country. That evening a group of us again met at the Star's uptown office, read the latest bulletins, and sang patriotic songs. Then we repaired to the offices of La Patrie on Ste Catherine Street east where, led by Gregor Barclay in his fine baritone voice, we sang "La Marseillaise" much to the edification of the French Canadians thronging the street. The next day I enrolled in the McGill C.O.T.C. and underwent my first drill on the campus. The public response to the Government's appeal was magnificent. To a call for some 20,000 men, no less than 33,000 came forward. In the circumstances, I seriously examined my own position. I knew nothing of soldiering, but then neither did many of my friends who had stormed the recruiting offices. On the other hand, I was a graduate engineer and, wrongly or rightly, I felt that I could better serve my country as a young engineer officer than as a private soldier. Hence my choice of the C.O.T.C. to begin with. One of the lessons of the Old War was indeed that Canada lost much irreplaceable officer material in the ranks of her famous 1st Division. Shortly after the outbreak of war I was transferred to Quebec where the C.P.R. was extending the Palais passenger station yard. Here the work was similar to that which had occupied me at the Glen. I immediately joined a Provisional School of Infantry, which drilled hard three or four nights a week and indulged in a route march on the occasional week-end. By mid-December we had qualified as infantry subaltern officers. Meanwhile the 1st Division had assembled at Valcartier. Towards the end of September the units boarded their transports at the docks and, in great secrecy, sailed down river to their rendezvous in Gaspe Basin. I finished my work at Quebec just before Christmas and in the New Year returned to Windsor Street in Montreal. About that time I was gazetted as a lieutenant in the 4th Field Company, Canadian Engineers, at Pointe St. Charles, which I visited only once, for being avid of every form of qualification, I took a signalling course at the

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old Craig Street armouries which kept me busy wagging a Hag or trying to read a blinking lamp every week night during the month of March. With several other enthusiasts I indulged in an equitation course at Reb's riding academy, and this at my own expense! It took me an awfully long time to become an "old soldier." In April, I was granted extended leave of absence by the C.P.R. and joined the Engineers Training Depot then being formed at the exhibition grounds at Ottawa. Here we were lodged in primitive quarters under the grandstand, which we shared with the 2nd Divisional Engineers who were on the point of leaving for overseas. At the exhibition grounds, and later when the weather became fine, at Rockcliffe, we carried on with our engineer training. Coincident with my arrival, the depot received from the West a batch of horses; in those days the horse provided the bulk of the army's tractive power. At the time we numbered only a skeleton instructional staff, a score of young officers, and less than a handful of men, and so it fell to us to care for our own mounts. After breakfast we marched to the stables, groomed our horses, and then rode in the manege for about an hour. At first we were issued with some old "colonial" saddles but, with malice aforethought, I have always thought, our riding instructor, R.S.M. Bill Fellowes, had them condemned as unserviceable. We therefore rode "numnah," that is to say on a saddle blanket, and nothing else. For those of us who had rough horses the going was a bit hard, but it was good training for all that. Later, we watered and fed our horses and walked back stiff-legged to the mess for lunch. In the afternoons we had drill and engineer training. We were a happy-go-lucky crowd of young men. Spending our days in the open, we were usually tired and keen to seek our cots at night. But there were always some pranksters seeking fun. One of these was an American, from the Carolinas, who remembering his English descent had come up north to join the Canadian forces. A. A. Page was one of the best-intentioned men in the world. In his heart of hearts he felt British, hut in manner he was pure American, and he found it hard to accustom himself to our ways. He was not, however, without a sense of humour. Our quarters were rat-infested and one night "Aye Aye" Page, as we used to call him, sat for two long hours with his sword poised over a rat-hole. After his long vigil patience was rewarded and with a sudden thrust the rat was pierced through and

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through. Proudly exhibiting his prize, Page triumphantly claimed to have been the first of our number to draw blood in this war. On another occasion, one of our brother officers came in from a solo exercise ride on the Driveway saying he had just undergone a most humiliating experience. At a moment when he was having a difficult time with his mount, to his horror he saw the Duke of Connaught, accompanied by Princess Patricia, approaching in the big Government House car. Instantly he realized his dilemma: should he salute the Governor General correctly and lose his seat, or remain in the saddle and fail in his duty? In the event, he succeeded in doing neither, and as the hard pavement was coming up to meet him, he heard the old Duke observe to his daughter, "Thank God we've got a Navy!" We went into camp at Rockcliffe some time in June, 1915. By then, we had received ample drafts of men from different parts of the country and we continued our training in comparatively good conditions. We lashed logs together to make bridges and to this day I think I could "pick up" a clove hitch. We made barbed-wire entanglements and drove galleries into the blue-clay banks of the Ottawa which cut like butter. We drilled a fair amount and I became proficient in the old company drill, or rather, I gave more time to it than did many of my fellows. Our Permanent Force instructors lived a gentlemanly existence and reported for duty at 8 A.M. We young militia officers had a stiffer time of it for we had reveille at 5.30 and put our men through physical exercises before breakfast which I then thought, and still think, was a barbarous practice. But all the while our depot was concentrating on departures for overseas. I was in an early draft of 150 men and 3 officers, who about mid-August marched through Ottawa and entrained for Montreal where we embarked on the Allen line s.s. Hesperian. Sailing at daybreak we slowly made our way down river. Once past Quebec I was in familiar waters. I remained on deck until quite late and made out the lights of Murray Bay where my family were spending the summer and, after a short while, those of Riviere du Loup on the south shore. The next morning we were below Matane. There was a stiff northeast breeze blowing and for the remainder of the time we were in the Gulf I felt quite squeamish. Thereafter, the usually foul North Atlantic was like a mill-pond and I enjoyed the rest of the voyage. There was a continual haze about that restricted our vision to less than a mile. One fine day, about noon, into this circle of view came the

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27

magnificent sight of a five-masted schooner lying becalmed on the oily sea. We were unescorted. Poor Hesperian went down on her return voyage to Canada. As we sailed up the Channel on our last night aboard the sea was still dead calm, and the August moon was full. All our 1500 men were stationed on deck wearing their lifebelts. As I was off duty until midnight I dallied in the smoking-room, played bridge, and won a couple of pounds. At 12 o'clock I went out to be with my men. The night was perfect and our ship was being pushed along a knot or two above her usual speed. There was plenty of traffic and as the fellow in the crow's-nest called to the bridge every new object he had spotted, the weary acknowledgment came from the officer on duty. As dawn came we slowly pushed our way into Plymouth harbour. We could not have experienced a warmer welcome to the Old Country. The sunrise was glorious. Nelson's old Victory was at anchor in the roads, and her cadets manned the yards to give us a throaty cheer as we passed by. It was harvest time and the fields ashore were covered with shocks of corn. I made out the village of Saltash, where nearly a century previously my grandfather had come back to school from Prince Edward Island. Beside me was an Englishman who had not been home for more than a decade. He had a lump in his throat that was actually visible. We entrained without delay and during the day made our way across the south of England, arriving at Shorncliffe shortly after dark. As we journeyed I felt now at first hand the truth of the Yankee tourist's remark that the English countryside looked as if it had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb every morning before breakfast. At Shorncliffe I spent four months as happy and care-free as any I can remember even though for most of that autumn we lived in bell tents behind the small officers' mess. Everything I owned became as damp as wet blotting paper. But we were young, we had not a care in the world, and we soon became inured to the moist airs that seem continually to flow over the southern counties from the Atlantic. We continued our training but I remember once remarking, shortly before proceeding to France, that I had been taught nothing at Shorncliffe that I had not done quite as well at Rockcliffe. However, we were spending four additional months in the Army which were invaluable for much is learned as if by a form of inunction. But we did not work too seriously. One or two of our "horsey"

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Soldiers and Politicians

companions called on the Master of the East Kent Fox Hounds who was good enough to say that we should be welcome at their meets. And so, on our off days, or in any event on the days we declared a holiday, a number of us, each accompanied by one of our men, would set off for the meet which might easily be some ten miles distant. We rode our army mounts, probably against regulation but no one said us nay. My first day was like a dream for it seemed to me that I was taking part in a living tradition as I watched the Master (H. Selby Lowndes, a famous name in huntin' circles) hunting his hounds in and out of a small copse. And he was a master of more than hounds for, on occasion, his fruity language would have put our best Westerners to shame (in his youth Selby Lowndes had spent several years as a vaquero on the Argentine pampas). With most of the men away in the army, the fields were small and, apart from ourselves, consisted mainly of ladies, a few officers on leave, and the occasional local farmer. Our subscriptions were therefore welcomed by the Hunt secretary. Rationing was in force and as a consequence Selby Lowndes could keep but one horse, which was quite insufficient as he rode I don't know how many stone. One day we had a long run at the end of which the field consisted only of a brother officer named Greening and myself; by that time, hot and dishevelled, I felt that I was coming to pieces. In front, the hounds were dead-beat and at one moment they checked having lost the scent. Greening tried to rally them making all the dog noises he had ever heard, and some he hadn't, but to no avail and the hunt came to an end. Later, Selby Lowndes who on a very tired horse had been following us along a road overlooking the shallow valley into which our quarry had led us, told me that as we gave up the completely blown fox was but a short distance ahead and that had he been able to fetch up with us he would have killed. Most unfortunately, Greening did not know enough dog noises. On other occasions we would go rabbiting. Among our batmen were two jovial rogues, originally from South Staffordshire, who must have been descended from a long line of poachers. With a minimum of encouragement from their officers, these two worthies assembled a pack of five or six mongrel terriers, some nets, and a bagful of pinkeyed ferrets. Together we would repair to the country, usually to the Beechborough estate, set our nets, put the ferrets into the warren, and await results. In a moment we would hear, or rather feel, a sue-

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cession of subterranean thumps, out would bound an unfortunate rabbit who in a trice would find itself a helpless ball in the net. It would then be promptly bagged. The next morning we would hold a coursing meet on Sir John Moore plain. We would bring out our terriers and set the wretched rabbits free one by one, meanwhile placing bets on the cur of our choice. Actually, the rabbits almost invariably got away with their hides for while the plain was innocent of cover and as Bat as a billiard table, a rabbit can make a right-angle tum at full speed, something quite beyond the capacity of a terrier. It was amusing to see the latter go sprawling with the rabbit bounding away to the edge of the plain and to safety in the shrubbery on the side of the hill. One fine morning a terrified rabbit was coursed through a company of infantry at drill, whereupon the men broke ranks and joined in the chase. In such ways did we seek recreation. I had never been happier and in a letter home I wrote, in part, I love England. The quiet little villages tucked away behind the hills, with many estates filling in between, seem in their grave dignity to express so much to one whose mind had been so well prepared for them. All is so quiet and reserved, and while I shall always be a Canadian, it does feel like home.

That year, 1915, I ate my Christmas dinner away from home for the first time, with two of my brothers (one a staff officer on the Shomcliffe command, the other in the Army Service Corps), in a little private hotel in Folkestone. The dining room was well filled, the other guests being principally British army officers and their wives. At dessert one rose and in a particularly graceful little speech invited the company to drink the healths of their Canadian comrades who on this day of days were so far from home and who had so handsomely left everything to come to the aid of the Mother Country. We were much touched by this kindly gesture and my brother, Billy (now Lt.-Col. E. W. Pope), who was the senior, rose and expressed our thanks. But, he went on to say, while it was true that our action was of assistance to England in her fight for freedom, and we were all glad that this was so, yet the fact was that deep down in our hearts we felt that Canada was also in danger and that primarily we had come overseas in defence of our own homeland. This was the first instance in my memory of an expression of the thought that Canada, too, was fighting on her own account.

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During the autumn of 1915, our field companies in France had found that they could usefully employ more subaltern officers than the four granted them by their war establishment. It was accordingly decided to attach two supernumerary lieutenants to each such engineer unit, and towards the end of the year I found myself included in a draft of twelve young officers which was to sail from Folkestone to Boulogne on New Year's Day, 1916. It was a fine winter's day with a brisk northwest breeze blowing and we were all sick. But once ashore we soon recovered and ate a hearty lunch at the hotel Folkestone to which many of us always repaired as we passed through Boulogne on our way to or from leave in the Old Country. It was my first visit to France, and as I walked along the docks my strongest impression was how neatly even the fishwives had their hair dressed! We made our way to the front at a leisurely pace, lunching at Calais the following day. Here I met with an instance of Old World courtesy I have never forgotten. The restaurant, a particularly good one, was crowded with British (including ourselves) and French officers. As the former entered and left the room they did as they were accustomed to do at home, that is to say, they paid no attention to any one. The French, on the other hand, invariably saluted the company by momentarily coming to attention and clicking their heels. I was one of the last of our party to pay his bill and leave, and as I had noticed a French general de brigade not far from me I decided to go French for the occasion. The effect was electrical. Every French officer rose most punctiliously to return my salute. "Time spent on reconnaissance," the little red book used to tell us, "is seldom wasted." Nor, in my experience, is simple courtesy. It costs nothing and invariably pays a handsome dividend. We reached Bailleu} late that evening and I was impressed by the rise and fall of the German Hares which could be seen from the train as we were nearing the station. The next morning we reported to Corps Headquarters where we were allowed to choose among ourselves the unit to which we wished to be sent. A chap named Bull and myself elected to go to the 4th Field Company of the 2nd Division, at which Wilbo Anderson (Brigadier W. B. Anderson) growled at us, "You're a pair of idiots. That unit is well into the Salient [Ypres] and you'll both be dead in a month." This was a cheery welcome, but Bull and I stuck to our guns and in a few moments we had loaded our bed-rolls on a Bain

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wagon and were on our way to Dickebusch where our unit was billeted. Here we were quartered with the oats and the rats in the farm-house attic until we managed to get shelters dug for ourselves in the orchard. Protected from the weather only by roof-tiles, how cold and dripping damp was that attic! Our Commanding Officer then was Major G. A. Inksetter, of Hamilton; he was killed later that year. Several of the other officers I had already known, particularly Bob Powell, of Ottawa. Our unit was in the line and work consisted of building new defences and improving the old. We worked at night for the enemy overlooked our positions. The events of the Old War have been recounted time without number, even though the Official History of Canadian operations has yet to be completed. I shall therefore content myself with a short resume of my own peregrinations. We stayed at Dickebusch until August when we were drawn into the vortex of that blood bath known as the Somme. We worked steadily on our defences, twice being required to work up front without a break for nine long weeks. This was no picnic as our billet, or rather shelters, were smack in the line of field batteries. I was soon given a section and as a conscientious young officer I charged myself with the business of seeing to the comfort of my men. That, in the circumstances, this was but a case of love's labour lost was soon brought home to me. In the early part of 1916, our army seemed to be composed very largely of Old Countrymen, that is to say, so far as my unit was concerned, of British tradesmen who had come out to Canada before 1914, and who had enlisted on the outbreak of war. Fine fellows they were, mature of age, capable, with their hearts very much in the right place but, as well, as independent as Old Nick. They were also inveterate gamblers but they were experienced enough to know that it is not given to every man to be a successful gambler. And so on pay-day the section would hand over a part of its take to the two of their number most expert in the game of Crown and Anchor and charge them to pit their luck and skill against some neighbouring unit. On one particular night we had worked hard in the rain and had slithered about, ankle deep in mud. We were, consequently, a tired crew when, about midnight, we got back to our quarters. Our officers' mess was far from excellent and I supped rather dismally off cold bully

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which, as Dr. Johnson would have put it, was as bad as bad could be; I cannot say that it was ill-fed and ill-killed, but I do remember that it was decidedly ill-kept and ill-dressed. It was washed down with a glass of unexciting "Source Badoit," for as a rule I did not care for whisky. After my cheerless supper I began to make my rounds, and found I was quite unexpected. As I descended the steps of the first dug-out I was quickly aware of sounds of revelry. In addition, I was almost blinded by the white glare of a superior gasoline lamp-in my cold rat-ridden attic I had nothing but the stub of a candle with which to light myself into my bed-roll. The men greeted me kindly and when I said I had dropped in to see if they were comfortable, the senior put me at my ease in a fatherly sort of way. They had been there since the previous autumn and were as snug as snug could be. The two skilled gamblers had been out the previous day and had obviously done well for the section were supping off cold roast chicken and endive salad, accompanied by unlimited quantities of champagne! The humour of the situation much appealed to me and I told my cheery rascals that only at their special request would I again come to inspect their living quarters. In August we set off to take our turn at the Somme. We marched to the St. Omer area and then entrained for a Point somewhere between Abbeville and Amiens. We marched forward for four days. The Division had spent some ten months in the forward area and of marching it had had none. As a consequence, we could not claim a good mark under this head. In the section there was a tall fair-haired Anglo-Saxon by the name of Williams, who had been brought up in Maida Vale. Because of this, or perhaps merely by coincidence, he was a dry comedian, and not entirely unfamiliar with stage life. I was once foolish enough to ask him what he had been in civil life. "Sir," he replied, "I was a pessimist," and put me properly in my place. In his kit he had a tin Hute on which, as we marched, he regaled us with the popular airs of the day. This greatly helped us as we wearily slogged along over the hard French pave towards the end of a long day. As we came within sight of Albert we halted for the night and prepared to bivouac on the famous brickfields. While I was looking for a place for my bed-roll I noticed Sapper Williams hovering about. Quite obviously there was something on his mind so I beckoned him over. "S'ir," he sa1'd , "I'm desperate. " H e then went on th at he was

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dead broke, that (contrary to all regulation) there was a game of Crown and Anchor going on within a few feet of us, and that down in the nearby village was the last chance for a few glasses of beer before we went into the line on the morrow. Laughingly I gave him ten francs which in those days was the equivalent of two dollars. Within the hour my lad was back. He returned me my ten francs, saying that he had had his beer and was no longer broke. We went into the line a few days before the battle of the 15th of September, which saw the tanks used for the first time, and later that day the brilliant capture of the village of Courcelette. A week or so later I wrote home as follows: The Alligators or landships were a huge success. They led the attack at good speed over the fearfully torn up ground, making straight for the enemy strong points, smoking, spitting fire-i.e., the Bash of their M.G.'s and small guns-so that the poor German men facing them must have thought them the creatures of a disordered brain and perhaps what in old Quebec might have been taken for loups garous.

Never in our time, I imagine, was human life held as cheaply as it was on the Somme in 1916. The British Expeditionary Force suffered over 50,000 casualties on the 1st of July, the day on which the battle began, and heavy losses continued to be incurred throughout that summer and autumn. At that stage of the war all attacks proved costly but it was also clear that our organization was still pretty green. Officers had not yet sufficient experience to judge between what was essential and what was not. Within my own limited range, I saw more than one platoon destroyed to no good purpose. I thought then, and I still think, that it takes about two years and three major operations effectively to "blood" one of our fighting formations. The 15th and 16th of September were trying and on coming out late the second day I went down to a rest station for three or four days. I was soon fit once more and did my little bit in the battle of the 26th of September, when my section was able to do a useful job of work in consolidation of the newly won ground. Shortly afterwards we were relieved and proceeded by easy stages to Bully Grenay, roughly mid-way between Loos and Vimy. During the summer of 1916, Colonel H. T. (Skipper) Hughes, our C.R.E., told me that I had been recommended for attachment to an infantry brigade as a staff learner. Thus in December of that year I was ordered to report for duty to the 5th Infantry Brigade, then com-

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manded by "Long" Archie Macdonnell. The Brigade Major, Clark Kennedy, was kindness itself, but some six weeks later I found myself transferred to Victor Odium's staff of the 11th Brigade ( 4th Division), then in line on Vimy Ridge. Here I was assigned Intelligence duties. This was good fun. I spent most of my time up front studying the enemy's positions. I was with General Odium when, with Bill MacBrien's 12th Brigade, we put on the disastrous gas "show" of March 7, 1917. It was during this abortive raid that both the commanding officers of the 54th and 75th battalions (Kemball and Beckett) were killed when leading their men on what was patently a forlorn hope. Somewhere along the chain of command someone, obviously "of no extensive scope of mind," insisted that the attack go in, in the face of reports from the line that wind conditions and so on were unfavourable. The following day a chivalrous German officer, who had repulsed us, arranged a truce and gave us back our dead. But the winter, which was a hard one, was wearing on and as the end of March approached the artillery preparation for the Battle of Vimy was begun. This battle I was not to see for about the 1st of April, when carrying out my intelligence duties at forward headquarters, word came that I had been selected to attend the next Junior Staff Course due to begin a few days hence at Clare College, Cambridge, and that I must be on my way at once. Hastily packing my kit I started back and such was my impatience that I disdained the long communication trench and went overland, even though it was full daylight. About half-way back to rear headquarters I noticed that I had come away without my Sam Browne belt. I had therefore to tum about to fetch it, and thus got a last close view of the Ridge for a period of some six or seven weeks. The artillery preparation was in full swing (the element of surprise was entirely lacking in this battle) and as the spring thaw was well advanced, the top of the Ridge reminded me of a thick stew in a slow boil. Our big shells were landing on the enemy's trenches with monotonous regularity and each explosion threw up masses of liquid mud and filth. The enemy must have endured much those days and it was no great surprise to me when, a week or so later, I learned that our attack had been a success. But what I have always thought was the outstanding feature of our Brigade's action in this battle was the fact that although they lost all their officers early on in it the men of our lusty 102nd Battalion of North British Colum-

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bians finally attained their objective under the leadership of their N.C.O.'s. It was a pleasant respite to find oneself in residence in a college at Cambridge, and Clare has always been dear to me since. Others may extol the beauty of King's College chapel but the quiet dignity of Clare made an impression on my mind that I retain to this day. We worked hard. Indeed, we were crammed, but I remember our commandant telling us that though our minds had been filled with a jumbled mass of seemingly indigestible facts we should later find that much had been retained. The 11th Brigade spent the summer of 1917 in front of Vimy and later slightly to the north before the mining town of Lens. Here Victor Odlum's individualistic tendencies had full play. He was always up front and as I was his intelligence officer I was usually with him. By that summer he had been wounded three times, on each occasion by an enemy sniper when, in broad daylight, he was prowling about ahead of his own front line. He led me many a merry dance. At one time on the Lens front we seemed to have against us an enemy unit of low morale. Taking advantage of this fact the General in the course of an afternoon advanced his outposts on an entire battalion front a distance of upwards of one hundred yards. I shall never forget the look of blank astonishment on a corporal's face as he saw his brigade commander, followed by the usual retinue, approach his post seemingly from the enemy's lines. The next day, wishing to repeat this performance on his other battalion's front, the General went out again. This time we went alone without even an orderly. At one moment, when in front of our positions, the General said in his brisk way, "Pope, jump out and see if there is anything in that trench yonder." I did as I was told, but I had only taken a few steps when there was that tell-tale crack of a rifle bullet in my ears. I instinctively Hopped but as luck would have it on a small hillock with the result that my posterior must have been clearly visible to the German sentry who kept pumping shots at me without check. Cautiously I inched down to lower ground and lay low for a long ten minutes or so. Then, the firing having stopped, I leaped to my feet and bounded back to cover. All that Odlum said was, "I was going to give you another five minutes and if by that time you had not come in, I meant to come back after dark and fetch you." Later on that autumn, the Corps was ordered north to the old

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Salient where the Battle of Paaschendaele was in full swing. If the Somme had been a blood bath, Paaschendaele was one of mud. We went by march route and to this day I can hear the regimental bands bringing us along to the strains of "Colonel Bogey" and "It's a long long trail a-winding." The tour itself was a ghastly experience. The shelling was bad enough but the conditions underfoot were worse. By the time we got there any further attacks were out of the question, and so we of the 11th Brigade had merely to hang on to our swamp-like positions taking a heavy pounding in the process. With my observers I spent six days with the battalion in line. The forward area had been drenched with mustard gas, and the pill-box from which we observed what we could of the enemy positions had received more than its fair share. We attempted to decontaminate the spot but we were unsuccessful and all my fellows were evacuated as gas casualties. They all soon recovered, I am glad to be able to say. Having spent less time than they actually in the pill-box, I got away with a sore throat and a pair of gummy eyes. That wars can only be won by offensive action is unquestionably true, provided the higher command is gifted with skill and a lively imagination. Of these little was shown in the Salient during the autumn of 1917. Apart from its dreary waste, I retain only a few impressions of Paaschendaele. One is when General Headquarters had ordered the Corps to join the British Fifth Army then commanded by General Gough who had not gained our respect to any degree at the Somme in 1916. At this, according to the rumour we had, General Currie had (shall I say) demurred, saying that while he would be happy to fight under the command of General Plumer, whom we had known and appreciated in 1915 and 1916, he was not prepared to serve under Fifth Army. In the event, we fought in the sector originally marked off for us, but the boundaries between the Fifth and Second Armies were shifted so as to place us under Plumer' s command. Currie's stand caused some English eyebrows to be raised in perplexed astonishment but it met with the warm support of the entire Corps. My first four days in the line were spent with a very good friend, Colonel Carey of the 54th Battalion. His dispositions were all awry but, as he saw it, he had relieved garrisons that were still in existence only because they did not fall within the enemy's shelling pattern and was therefore determined not to place his men in localities that looked

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well on the map but that, from the experience of others and from our own observation, were subject to heavy artillery fire. He stood firm on this in the face of admonition from above. As it turned out, his casualties were markedly less than those suffered by his sister battalion, whose commander was more orthodox in his military outlook. In any event, the chances of an enemy attack in the prevailing conditions were remote and consequently Carey was able to concentrate his attention on seeing to it that his companies had their rations delivered to them each evening without fail. This was no mean task but he was eminently successful except in the case of his own battalion headquarters. However, Sid McCann, the orderly officer back at Brigade, used to send me once a day a well-filled sand-bag and thus I was able to some extent to come to Carey's rescue. McCann was also thoughtful enough to include two bottles of lager beer with each delivery, one of which I used to share with my host; for the other, the other officers played cpld hands. The winter of 1917-18 found the 4th Division back on our old Lens front. During our absence the enemy had got his head up and we had to be quite active for a week or so in getting it down once more where, we were of opinion, it belonged. We were still there when the storm of March 21 broke against the Fifth Army to our right. A week later there was a second German attack on the Arras front which involved our next-door neighbours. That afternoon the Division was told that it was to be relieved immediately and that it should side-slip a few miles to the south. By that time the 4th Division had fought for some eighteen months and had been blooded by three major operations. We had therefore reached a pitch of efficiency which enabled us to act on the "nod," as it were. Our Brigade H.Q. spent that night at Mont St. Eloi, and early next morning General Odlum ordered me to proceed to a British brigade headquarters then in the line somewhat to the south and to arrange their partial relief that very night. All that was given me was the name of the formation and a map location. As I had some distance to go I mounted my horse and made off cross country, with a groom who, having led a most sheltered existence, did not much relish the mission. I rode forward as far as I could and went the rest of the way on foot. Meeting the brigade major, I quickly arranged for guides and their meeting places and hurried back, much to the relief of my not too valiant groom. On receiving my report General Odlum issued his

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orders verbally and at once the men of the 75th Battalion streamed overland across the old Vimy battlefield in dispersed order to the rendezvous I had arranged for them. The Corps spent that spring and early summer in and about the Vimy-Arras area. During this time it fought no great battles, but it was not inactive. For my part I was given a new appointment. That year it was decided to merge all the engineer, mining, and pioneer units into brigades of three engineer battalions and a bridging unit, and I was posted to the 4th Engineer Brigade as brigade major. We spent some time getting reorganized and, incidentally, recovering from the effects of Spanish Ru from which we all suffered. Then began the exhilarating "One Hundred Days." This truly glorious period can best, I think, be described by some extracts from letters I wrote at the time. 4.05 A.M. 8th August, 1918 . . . . Tonight, after a very exacting move, I am in my headquarters dug-out awaiting the commencement of another great battle. The night is quiet and apparently the Boche does not expect us. The preliminary part of my job, i.e., preparation, is done and I am awaiting word from my units that they are in position. How different it all is to the time when I was with the ~ghting troops. All is quiet, no one is nagging us and I am back at Divisional HQ. So different is it that I think my role this time is but a travesty of war as I have known it. And knowing well that were I back at my old job, I should by this time be damn well scared to death, yet there is a thrill and a fascination about an action that makes you, when you are out of it, wish to a certain extent at least, that you were in it.... . . . And there goes the opening chorus. May we have good luck. According to Ludendorff, the 8th of August was a black day for the German Army. For us it was otherwise. 15th August, 1918 . . . . I returned to France from leave on the 31st of July just in time to start the trip southwards. We marched by night, kept our mouths shut, and then, as you know, hit the Boche a mighty fine wallop. As old Sam Blake seemed to feel in Sir John's day the "sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees" so there is a thrill in the air during a successful battle when the line is advancing, that is like nothing else on earth. The guns are roaring, the infantry have moved off, in a few minutes it is daylight. Suddenly the roads turn black with transport all moving forward, forward, the dust is hellish, but you don't mind it. Get forward is the word on every lip, stores, ammunition, food, horses, men. Prisoners and wounded come filing back, dispatch riders dash madly about trying to keep you in touch

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with your different units. A beautiful day, you are happier than you ever were before and in these few disjointed sentences, I have told you all I can remember of it. On September 2, 1918, the Canadian Corps smashed its way through the Queant-Drocourt line, the northern extension of the famous Hindenburg line. I wrote: About two years ago [as it seemed, so much had happened in a few weeks], on the 8th of August to be exact, I wrote you a few lines on the eve of the great Battle of Amiens. This note is written under similar circumstances. My division was the last to move up and this morning we kick off on the second phase of this present battle and go up against the Queant-Drocourt line. In so far as my brigade is concerned, all our plans and dispositions have been made. . . . Our troops have moved forward to their respective positions of assembly, their tasks have been allotted them and there remains nothing to do but to ring up the curtain. I should snatch a bit of sleep, but I am not sleepy, though in some ways I am a bit tired. Vimy took months of preparation. Four days ago I knew nothing of this affair and this job is at the least of equal magnitude. Everyone, as usual, is as confident as can be. No one seems to have the slightest doubt of our success, i.e., within the Corps. Such spirit is more than half the battle. I have little more to say. One gets somewhat used to the "before the battle feeling" and I do not expect to come to any harm. At the end of September we had wound up the fighting at Bourlon Wood and the end of October found us on the Escaut Canal before Valenciennes, which the Corps successfully attacked on All Saints Day. Somewhere in the Chateau de Versailles there hangs a painting depicting a capture of Valenciennes during the eighteenth century. In both instances the tactics followed were the same: first the taking of Mont Houy which lies immediately to the south of the town, and ensures the possession of the rest. As this operation was concluded another division leap-frogged over us and we passed into reserve. At about the same time a wire came down the chain of command announcing the expected appearance of German parlementaires and enjoining us to afford them safe conduct should they appear on our front. Not long afterwards in response to an advice from home that I record further impressions before they faded, I wrote a long account, from which I give excerpts to show something of our mood.

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Binche, 9th December, 1918. . . . Looking back to those dark days at the latter end of March of this year, when the last phase began, I remember well writing home that we could compare the whole affair to a game of ten-cent draw poker that had been drifting along for years and then in order to wind things up, the limit had been raised as high as heaven. I well remember those days sitting in our dugouts in Lieven and hoofing over to my General [Odium] with each situation wire as it came in, plotting the new line to which the pink form showed us we had been pressed back the previous day and agreeing among ourselves that we had at last reached the home stretch. Then for the next six weeks we sat in front of Vimy, the old corps extended over a dangerously broad front, and waiting for an attack that never came. It was most damnable for the nerves. Then came those glorious months of May and June, when the Canadian Corps rested and trained and stored up that reserve of power which was later to free Amiens, smash the Queant-Drocourt line, and so soon after to carry the battle over the Canal du Nord, over Bourlon Hill into Cambrai and yet beyond . . . . At the end of August we took over the line and for a day faced the famous system of trenches that ran from Queant north to Drocourt and yet beyond. On September 2nd, over went the infantry and in a few hours the most expertly sited system of trenches I have ever seen was in our hands. We did not get much beyond them, for going over the next roll in the ground, the infantry encountered the most appalling machine-gun fire they had yet experienced. That night, however, the Boche, not liking his medicine, quietly withdrew behind the apparently sure protection of the Canal du Nord. We were soon relieved and rested(?) in the most barren, devastated and lonely area I have ever seen, that which lies immediately east of Arras. Then came the orders for a third attack, not a whit easier than the other two. Our line lay west of the Canal du Nord and our task was to cross the Canal, carry the glads culminating in Bourlon Wood and press on down towards Cambrai. I feared before the attack that our men might not have sufficiently rested after their two strenuous struggles. In battle one is subjected to two distinct fatigues, one to the muscular system, the other to the nervous system. A few days rest repairs the former, the repair of the latter is problematical. One's surroundings, the weather, and a hundred and one other things, contribute towards it and in my humble judgement, one cannot be too certain. I might say here, that once the Corps had proved itself, I never bothered much about the plan of the attack when I was weighing the chances of success, but that always I tried to gauge the feelings of the men who were to do the job. Granted our fellows were in the right mood for a scrap, then all the devils in hell could not stay them. On the other hand, should the men feel that they are being asked to do more than their share, the most carefully planned attack is bound to go phut and the wires are bound to state that "the situation is obscure," i.e., they

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have not got there. Well, September 27th was the day and that evening our men were sitting tightly on their objective and had their first view of Cambrai. Then there followed the most bitter fighting we have ever seen. In front of Cambrai and in that angle lying within the Escaut and Sensee canals, the old Hun apparently elected to make his stand. In our division we attacked each morning with one brigade. Each attack gained from one to two thousand yards and each afternoon strong counter-attacks put us [back] on the line we started from. Our losses were cruel, almost crushing, but so must have been the enemy's. On our divisional front alone, we identified at least 6 enemy divisions and elements of as many others. Early in October, we were relieved and another Canadian Division had the honour of being the first to enter Cambrai .... These are excerpts from an account written just after the guns had ceased to sound. As I look back now to the years 1914-18, I marvel yet again at the peak of efficiency the Canadian forces had attained by the time hostilities came to an end. Beginning with the arrival of our I st Division early in 1915, and the gas attack it soon sustained in April of that year, we had steadily grown, division by division, until some eighteen months later we had become a corps of four divisions without equal-I pray I may say without undue boasting -along the entire Western front. Each season we had fought our allotted number of battles and the experience enabled us to increase in efficiency until we had become a truly elite army corps. On enlistment our men had brought with them magnificent martial qualities that never failed them, and as time went on our officers had learned their jobs and had become military- as well as martial-minded. In Canada, it is true, we had known some man-power troubles but these were mainly political in significance and in terms of numbers minor when compared to those of the British Army. When we resorted to conscription in 1918, we were required only to call on our young unmarried men under the age of thirty. In the United Kingdom the authorities found themselves obliged to draw on their reserves of married men up to the age of forty or thereabouts. Our field divisions rarely, if ever, found themselves seriously under strength. Indeed, at times reinforcements equal to our anticipated casualties in a forthcoming battle were already available to us in advance of railhead. On the other hand, in the British Army not a few divisions were so weak in numbers that they could not be employed offensively. Thus it was that we abounded in strength during those glorious

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last hundred days. Our major attacks were carried out as if by clockwork and, towards the end, it used to thrill me as I studied the situation maps to observe what I was in the habit of calling "the Canadian salient," so much had our advance exceeded that of our neighbours. But, again, this was only natural for we were proportionately stronger than were most of the divisions of the B.E.F. In the early days, because of barbed-wire and murderous machinegun fire, we were constrained to endure dreary trench or siege warfare but with the coming of the tank offensive power once again gained the ascendancy and moving, if not exactly open, warfare became the order of the day. How completely let down we all felt in Valenciennes the day we were relieved, for we had the conviction that we should not again be called into the line and that for us the war was over. For four long years we had been spurred by an intense desire to overcome our enemy and now that this had been achieved our feelings were those of great lassitude. For want of something to do, I jumped into a light van and made my way down to the coast for a spell of leave in London. The 11th of November was for me a full day. I began it by going quite early to the Bank of Montreal in Waterloo Place to replenish my stock of ready cash, something we did every morning when on leave. While I was in the bank, Dudley Oliver, the manager, told me that the Armistice had been signed and that the cessation of hostilities would be announced at 11 A.M. So far as I was concerned this was but the confirmation of an assured fact and I merely felt "Well, that is that." I then returned to my hotel (Cox's in Jermyn Street, which is now no more) and casually mentioned to the two girls in the office that the war was over. I looked on dully as the pair began dancing round their chairs and desks as if a mouse was after them and then later realized what a tremendous thing the news must be to the sorely tried civilian population. I then went to Argyle House (Canadian Headquarters) to call on my brother Billy, and with him went up to the roof to see how Regent Street would react to the news. Punctually at 11 o'clock the maroons went off and looking down we could see the pedestrians in their hundreds stop, look up, and, as the significance of the signal dawned upon them (for the secret had apparently been well kept),

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begin to cheer, and then to dance for all the world like a great troupe of marionettes. As I wrote at the time: The staid and apparently unemotional British public let themselves go and celebrated for a week! It was a wonderful, enthusiastic, yet orderly exhibition of a national expression of joy. The King was given several remarkable demonstrations of affection. How the Englishman loves his King! Within a few minutes half of London downed pens, yardsticks, and scissors, and made for Buckingham Palace as fast as their legs could carry them. Within thirty minutes in front of the Palace was a swaying singing crowd, as far as the eye could reach, singing God Save the King in such a way that he was indeed a strange being who did not have a lump in his throat. The Royal family came out on the balcony and were given cheer after cheer. It was very fine. I lunched at the Carlton, and a noisy lunch it was for everyone was bubbling over in good humour. A little later I passed through the Ritz where I remember a French war loan poster that some reveller had amended with a touch of Gallic wit. The poster showed a very poilu French poilu advancing with fixed bayonet over a shell-tom battlefield. Above him, to the left, were the words On les aura, while below and to the right, was the one word, Souscrivez. With a thick pencil the wag had scratched out these words and had substituted On les a eu, and Applaudissez. I dined that night I know not where, but I do know I did myself well regardless of expense. Then I went to hear Chu Chin Chow for about the sixth time. After the show Oscar Ashe appeared dressed as John Bull. Smoking a huge cigar, he expressed the country's satisfaction on the completion of a job well done, and his words were warmly received by the audience which had remained in their places to a soul. From His Majesty's I strolled up to Piccadilly Circus which, by then, was a vast eddy of humanity, all, by and large, in high good humour. As I stood for a while at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, I heard a man, apparently addressing his wife and daughter, exclaim in a somewhat broken voice, "I thank God that I have lived to see my countrymen so rejoice in victory!" The sincerity of his feeling was very moving. But I was soon to experience an emotion of quite a different order. Hearing a scuffie behind me, I turned and saw a tall rangy Australian soldier about to "man-handle" a very young English second lieutenant

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who, apparently conscious of the dignity due his rank, was spluttering in righteous indignation. What moved me, I do not know, though possibly my extremely good dinner had been a contributing factor, but I stepped forward, and threw my arms around the Aussie saying, "Here, old man, let it go. This is no time to be squabbling among ourselves." By some miracle the soldier calmed down and a moment later a gaily dressed French woman embraced me, kissed me on both cheeks, and exclaimed, "Merci, Monsieur, vous etes un gentleman!" Gently disengaging myself, I murmured, "II n'y a pas de quoi, Madame." Out of the corner of my eye I could see my newly found Australian chum looking as if he thought that, perhaps, I might be trying to steal his companion, and I had not the slightest wish to tangle with a man who, for all I knew, might be the champion rough and tumble fighter of Alice Springs. I quietly lost myself in the crowd. The night was chilly, or at least I was, and fearful of the Hu which was then raging, I thought it prudent to start back towards my hotel. As I entered Piccadilly and passed by Swan & Edgars, I noticed some commotion in the little street which separates that well-known establishment from the Piccadilly Hotel. I made my way through the crowd and came upon a sight which I thought admirably expressed the high good humour that everywhere prevailed. In a small oval left by the onlookers was a young West Ender, immaculately dressed in top hat and tails, a living embodiment of "Gilbert the Filbert," gaily dancing a pas de deux with a buxom middle-aged woman who might have been a cook, a char, or a fish-wife. The lady was proving herself more than equal to the occasion for whatever step she may have been dancing, she was dancing it both confidently and remarkably well. The crowd, the front row sitting on the curb with their legs extending well into the narrow street, were a mixture of the Smart Set in evening dress and an equal number of ordinary Londoners. All were enjoying themselves to the full and encouraging the dancers by clapping their hands and singing a song that was quite new to me, the refrain of which I have always remembered as "Lift your knees, Mother Brown." This brought an unforgettable day to a perfect end, and it was with delight that, many years afterwards, I came across the following passage in James Hilton's Random Harvest. The crowd were still singing "Knees up, Mother Brown" in the bars below. It sounded new to him, both words and tune, and he wondered if it was something else he had forgotten. He did not know that no one

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anywhere had heard it before-that in some curious telepathic way it sprang up all over London on Armistice night, in countless squares and streets and pubs; the living improvisation of a race to whom victory had come, not with the trumpet notes of a Siegfried, but as a common earth touch-a warm bawdy link with the mobs of the past, the other victorious Englands of Dickens, Shakespeare, Chaucer. I returned from leave to find that my Brigade had moved forward from Valenciennes to Frameries, a small coal-mining town in the Belgian Borinage. Here I was billeted on a retired brewer who had, as have so many Belgians, an excellent cellar, including a Chateau Lafite the quite remarkable quality of which I remember to this day. Meanwhile, plans for the Allied "Watch on the Rhine" were going forward and we learned to our disappointment that our Division was not to march into Germany. On the contrary, it was to winter on the Gembloux plain, about midway between Brussels and Namur. The morning after our arrival in Gembloux I sent Freddie Alport, our administrative staff captain, to reconnoitre our allotted area. "Freddie," I admonished him, "there are three chateaux in our area any one of which, from the map, would do us well. The war, however, is over and so we might as well see to it that the conditions under which we pass the winter are as pleasant as possible. Look over these three chateaux and hit upon, not necessarily the grandest, but the one in which the family seem to be the nicest, and if it can boast of a daughter or two, why so much the better." Freddie returned late that afternoon saying that in the Chateau of Chaumont-Gistoux there were a mother and daughter who seemed to be all that I had in mind. "Then," said I, "that is where we shall go," little realizing at the time the future blessings I was thus assuring myself. It was a long, and for our unfortunate men, a dreary winter. Billeted for the most part in small villages in the heart of an extensive agricultural area, they had few facilities for recreation. We organized football matches, of course, and on one occasion an inter-battalion cross-country run. For my part, every fortnight or so I would take a lorry load of men and give them a run over the field of Waterloo which was not far distant. But at about 6.30 one evening, as I was leaving the office for the chateau to get ready for dinner, I passed two men in the darkness and heard one ask the other, 'What are you going to do tonight?" "Oh Hell," replied the second, "what is there to do? I think I'll go to bed." This reply saddened me, but there was not much

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I could do about it. That winter, however, I often pondered over the fact that in the Army when officers slack nothing much happens except that the men are neglected. On the other hand, when the men slack they are usually "crimed" for it, which seemed to me unjust. Thus the sombre winter characteristic of the Low Countries dragged on. In March I went on leave to the French Riviera and Rome. What a pleasant relief it was to be able to bask in the warm sunshine once more! Rome enthralled me. Each day I took in the sights, all the while regretting my less than scanty store of ancient history. In the evenings I went to the opera where, among others, I heard a fine performance of Me~stofele, and another quite new to me, L'Amore dei tre re, in which I found myself quite taken by the personality of one of the artists. Life is full of surprises, a truism which was once more brought home to me the next morning when I went down to St. Peter's. As I was wandering about the great monument, I was accosted by a sapper from my Brigade who asked how I was enjoying my visit to Rome. He himself volunteered the information that he was enjoying himself so much that he was already three days overdue at his unit. "But," he added philosophically, "Whatever I'll have to pay on my return will have been well worth it." Changing the subject quickly, he asked me what I had thought of the opera the previous night, adding that Johnson had sent him tickets. "And who may Johnson be?" I inquired. "Oh," vouchsafed my newly found friend, "he was the biggest of them three kings." "Steady, my buck," I broke in, in my innocence, "I read my programme and that fellow's name was Edouardo di Giovanni." "Edouardo di Giovanni, hell!" came the ejaculation. "His name is Edward Johnson, and I went to school with him in Guelph." Spring eventually triumphed over winter and by the end of April we had made arrangements for the return of the Brigade to England. My Colonel (H. T. Hughes) and I, however, travelled independently for we were to be included in the march of the Dominion troops through London in the early part of May. It was a fine ceremony during which many thoughts coursed through my mind. Foremost among these was a speculation about what I would have said if, in the early part of 1914, when I was a young engineer in the service of the C.P.R., someone had predicted to me that within five years, mounted on a horse lent me by the Life Guards, I should ride as a divisional staff officer through the streets of London to the cheers of

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its incomparable crowd and, as such, salute my King before the gates of Buckingham Palace. My reply to my own question can be imagined. We left England for home in June. The Brigade embarked on the old Olympic for Halifax, but I, for sentimental reasons, chose to travel via the St. Lawrence. Sailing from Glasgow on the little s.s. Saturnia for Montreal, I reached home safe and sound after an absence of nearly four long years.

• • • •

CHAPTER FOUR

• • • •

Peace-time Soldiering

During the summer of 1916, when I was serving with the 4th Field Company in Belgium, it occurred to me that, provided I did not get knocked out, by the end of the war I should probably find myself in a better position in the Army than would be open to me if I returned to the C.P.R. Moreover, real soldiering appealed to me, and so I applied for appointment to the Royal Canadian Engineers of our Permanent Forces. I was duly accepted and gazetted lieutenant in June of the following year and, remarkably enough, along with several others, promoted to the rank of captain the same day. On my return to Ottawa in 1919, I was demobilized from the Expeditionary Force and posted to Quebec City. Here I spent a little less than a year, on engineering duties pertaining to the maintenance of military properties, and in command of a small detachment of about 30 N.C.O.'s and men. I have always found it difficult to do two things at the same time and as a result, while the men were comfortably housed and equally well fed, they were somewhat neglected so far as their military training was concerned. But as they were mostly long-service tradesmen fully employed either in the workshop or in the offices, possibly the consequences were not too serious. Nevertheless, I was never happy about this aspect of things. Though I did not know it at the time, I was destined to spend most of my army service on the staff. I have therefore never commanded more than a section of a field company, a small detachment in peace-time in Quebec, and, many years later, small military missions in Washington and Berlin, all of about the equivalent strength of a platoon. This lack of command experience I always felt to be a serious handicap, but while I was conscious enough of it throughout my service, I never unnecessarily brought it to the notice of those with whom I later served at National Defence Head-

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quarters in Ottawa, and elsewhere. Thus it is that, although to my regret my Shakespeare is less than it should be, I have often found myself murmuring with Iago, A fellow .. . That never set a squadron in the field Nor the division of a battle knows!

On the other hand, in 1918, I was often under the impression that I was actually commanding my brigade as well as being responsible for its staff work. The maintenance of military properties is by no means an exhilarating occupation, and so there would be little point in describing my daily round in Quebec. Of course I soon found out that soldiering in peace-time is vastly different from active service, and that consequently I had much to learn. One of my lessons during this period fell under the head of extraregimental duty. During the autumn of 1919, I was appointed President of a court of inquiry "to inquire into and report on the escape of a prisoner from a small district unit and to say on whom responsibility therefor should rest." This prisoner was a half-wit and he had been placed in the custody of a district depot then carrying out the last stages of demobilization. Indeed, the depot itself was progressively demobilizing and was far under strength. It had no men available to guard the prisoner and so the poor fellow was used as a kitchen orderly by day and locked up in a bedroom by night. One fine morning he sauntered out the kitchen door and did not return. A fellow member on the court was Major John Collins who as a sergeant-major instructor of the old Permanent Force will surely be remembered by all army officers who served prior to 1914. Our little court duly sat, heard the evidence, and found that in the quite special circumstances of the case no blame should attach to anyone. The following day the report of proceedings was Hung back at us with the admonition that our finding was patently not in accord with the evidence, and that the court should reconvene and bring another finding more in consonance with our terms of reference. Collins and I did not relish the implied rebuke and so we merely added a rider to our original proceedings to the effect that the court, having reconsidered the evidence before it, found as it had on the first occasion. Again the proceedings bounced back at us, this time accompanied

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by a first-class dressing down alleging in considerable detail precisely where we had failed in our duty. I was not amused. Hastily I drafted an angry though respectful reply and read it over to Collins. Seeing his apparent inattention I exclaimed, "John, you're not listening." "No," he replied, 'Tm not," and asked, "Will you take an older man's advice?" "Of course I will," I said, adding with an element of caution, "provided it's good." "Well," said my colleague, 'Tm much older than you, and I've been in the army a long time, long enough to know that whatever your abilities may or may not be, you can't write two pages of foolscap without giving the other fellow a handle or two to grab hold of. No, let's stick to our guns and repeat our original finding. After all, no one would be rash enough to risk a charge of having tried to influence the court, and if they don't like our finding, why let them convene another court." I found the advice good. We acted accordingly and never heard another word about the matter. By the spring of 1920, my personal affairs began to loom in importance. During the year I had become engaged to be married and naturally enough I had an ardent desire to seal the contract. But the marriage was to take place in Belgium and while the modest savings I had accumulated during the war would have seen me through, I wished to reserve them to enable me to set up a home of my own in Canada. During the Armistice, when we were in Belgium, our Colonel, "Skipper" Hughes, used to tell us that he was angling for an appointment as officer-in-charge of the organization that would erect commemorative monuments on those battlefields on which Canadians had won distinction. His staff used good-naturedly to chaff in this regard for their one desire was to get back to Canada. But in Hughes's case further peace-time soldiering at home held no great attraction, and to spend his remaining service years towards pension in agreeable employment in France and Belgium suited him well. That spring I had heard from him, and putting my pride in my pocket, applied for the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission as a heaven-sent opportunity to cross the Atlantic to be married au frais de la princesse. And so, on September 2, 1920, I was married at Chaumont-Gistoux, to Simonne, daughter of Count Jean Jules du Monceau de Bergendal. As I was leaving our headquarters in Poperinghe for the ceremony, my old Scottish driver, with that pained expression that not a few of

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his race are wont to assume when deeply moved, admonished me, ''I'm telling ye, it'll be the best day's work ye've ever done in your life." It was. Our assignment on the Commission was interesting and in no way exacting. We worked from Skindles Hotel in Poperinghe and roamed the front seeking sites on the Somme, Vimy, and the Ypres Salient. With a suitable spot chosen, the next step was to secure the necessary land and the frustrations we endured that subsequent year embolden me to state my willingness to give long odds against anyone being able to obtain the title deeds to a property in northern France or Belgium in less than six months. To begin with, the village notary will invariably set an appointment for a preliminary talk at least a fortnight hence, instead of tomorrow. Then, perhaps, it will be found that the land in question belongs to an estate that has yet to be wound up; that a family council will have to be held to decide the issue; but often one member of that family will be wintering on the Riviera, or possibly the Azores, and will not be back until Easter; another may be in an asylum, which will necessitate a special power of attorney, and so on ad infinitum. (This is not to say, of course, that there can't be similar delays in Canada.) On one occasion Hughes and I were present at the unveiling of an Australian commemorative plaque in Amiens cathedral by Marshal Foch. Early that morning we accompanied the Australian party and the municipal council to the station to greet the old Generalissimo as he stepped from the Paris train. In a platoon we marched to the Hotel du Rhin where we had coffee. There we were also presented to the Marshal who had seized the occasion to light his enormous black brier pipe. When my turn came I took his hand and was so moved by his personality that I completely forgot to salute! Then the platoon formed up once more and in that delightfully French democratic manner we walked through the streets so that all the townspeople could acclaim the national hero. At the door of the Cathedral he was greeted by a senior prelate and the ceremony took its course. As will be recalled, relations between Church and State, in those days at least, were rarely cordial. At times they were not even correct. I was therefore interested, later that day, to hear a Frenchman drily observe that it took a group of Australians from the farthermost ends of the earth to bring Monsieur le Maire to church in Amiens.

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But time was passing on. Not much was being accomplished and in November, 1921, the Commission received peremptory orders to return home. This did not greatly distress me for my purpose had been achieved and the following month I had the pleasure of bringing my wife and our first-born son to Canada. I was soon posted to Toronto, to serve under Larry Bogart, District Engineer Officer, Military District No. 2, where, not to my surprise, I found the study of the roofing and plumbing of militia armouries to be an unexciting occupation. But after all it was the Sappers' peacetime duty and I got down to it. We had some diversion by going to camp at Long Branch and Niagara, where I enjoyed watching Henri Panet, the District Officer Commanding, in action. Panet was a gunner, and as such had spent much time at the old Tete du Pont barracks in Kingston. This was a hard school and, whatever else our Canadian gunners may or may not have been, they could command, a quality few of our other regular units seemed to be able to instil in their officers. But having had a taste of staff work my appetite for this side of soldiering had been whetted. I therefore put in for the Staff College at Camberley, England, and during the summer of 1922, I was selected to attend the preparatory course that autumn at Kingston. Entrance to the Staff College was by competitive examination and as all our training was based on the English model, not easy to study from afar, National Defence Headquarters had instituted the preparatory course in order to enable a small group of selected officers to prepare themselves adequately. It proved to be an interesting and, in some respects, a difficult course of study. Some subjects, such as training for war, which comprised both tactics and staff duties, were straightforward enough for our instructors were well provided with precis of lectures given at Camberley and elsewhere. But with the general subject of Administration the situation was otherwise, for in those days there was no text-book on the subject and, indeed, even if there had been, this would have been insufficient for the many aspects of British Army administration must be lived in order to be understood. There was never, so far as I could discover, any clear line of thought underlying the several parts of the study before us and this, doubtless, was because, as Lord Macmillan once put it when speaking of the failure of the civil law to establish itself in England, "the English genius has always had a strong aversion for and distrust of

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theory and principle."* What I was able to learn under this head was entirely due to my friendship with Major Bill Landon of the R.C.R. who before and during the war had served in an English regiment. We took many a walk together that autumn and winter during which we discussed and re-discussed the working of the Cardwell system, the peregrinations of the newly enlisted man from the recruiting office through his regimental depot to, say, his battalion serving in India (to all of which we had nothing similar in Canada), the problems of supply in the field, and so on. The examinations were held in the Kingston town hall in March, 1923. They proved to be a test of endurance for we wrote eight three-hour papers in four days, while for good measure I had a ninth in an optional subject on the morning of the fifth. We had studied to the limit of our strength and some, notably J. K. Lawson who was destined later to conduct himself so gallantly at Hong Kong, exceeded even that. It might be pertinent for me to remark at this point on how closely in those days our army was modelled on that of the United Kingdom; to a considerable extent it still is today. The war establishments of our units and the composition of our formations were precisely those of the British Regular Army. All our manuals were British and so was our tactical training. Practically all our equipment had been obtained in the United Kingdom save perhaps some forms of mechanical transport. True, we ran our own royal and provisional schools for the qualification of N.C.O.'s and officers of the Non-Permanent Active Militia, and of our regular instructors, but to qualify for higher rank our permanent force officers were required to sit for examinations set and marked by the War Office. Thus, while we conducted militia staff courses for the elementary staff training of selected volunteer officers, we were lacking in facilities for the higher command and staff training of our little regular army. Instruction in these matters was sought at the Senior Officers School at Sheerness, the British staff colleges at Camberley and Quetta, and later at the Imperial Defence College in London. Our army was indeed British through and through with only minor differences imposed on us by purely local conditions. All this was well known to our politicians, or it should have been. Repeated Imperial Conferences had stressed the fact that we were armed with the same weapons, used the same training manuals, etc., "Lord Macmillan, Law & Other things (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 79-80.

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as the British. The following extract from the proceedings of the Conference of 1909 makes this very clear, and it is as helpful for the situation in 1923 as when written : After the main Conference at the Foreign Office, a Military Conference took place at the War Office, and resulted in an agreement on the fundamental principles set out in Papers which had been prepared by the General Staff for consideration by the Delegates. The substance of these Papers . .. was a recommendation that, without impairing the complete control of the Government of each Dominion over the military forces raised within it, these forces should be standardized, the formation of units, the arrangements for transport, the patterns of weapons, etc., being as far as possible assimilated to those which have recently been worked out for the British Army. Thus, while Dominion troops would in each case be raised for the defence of the Dominion concerned, it would be made readily practicable in case of need for the Dominion to mobilize and use them for the defence of the Empire as a whole.*

I am often led to wonder if Service officers appreciate to the extent that they might the many compensations that attend them during their careers. What a boon it is to find oneself, in one's middle thirties, relieved of all duty and, in the pleasantest circumstances, to have the inestimable privilege of returning to university in order to add to one's knowledge of one's profession. Such an opportunity is given to few, and for my part I enjoyed it to the full. It was not entirely so with our British fellow-students at Camberley. Among them competition was keen, for the less successful army officer finds himself retired to pension at a comparatively early age. With us it was otherwise; in my time every Permanent Force officer could pretty well count on being able to put in his full thirty-five years' service and thus qualify for maximum pension. Moreover, we knew that at Camberley, being from a Dominion, we would be given a better report in our course than strictly we deserved. British officers were judged by the Directing Staff from every conceivable point of view, such as ability, personality, presence, manners, knowledge of English composition, proficiency at games, and so on without end. More than one student later told me that he had never lived through a more miserable three months than he had during our first term. To feel oneself constantly under the most minute observation is of course trying, particularly as all were anxious for a good report on which their ~colonial and Imperial Conferences, vol. II, Imperial Conferences (Queen's Printer, 1954), Part I, pp. 8-9.

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future careers so greatly depended. However all this might have been, to a man they pretended to make light of their work, and it was at Camberley I learned for the first time that to be ambitious was held in some quarters to be a fault than which there could be none graver. We worked assiduously. In our first term or two, we had to write an essay each week in order, I suppose, to show if we had any views of our own on a wide variety of subjects, and also if we could express ourselves at all clearly in our mother tongue. We did many schemes out of doors, and paid visits to ports and to military and industrial establishments. One sortie I much enjoyed was to Harlech, in North Wales, where we did an Indian mountain warfare scheme, and where to my amused astonishment my English companions looked upon the descendants of the Early Britons inhabiting the glorious Welsh mountains as "demned foreigners." We listened to many outside lecturers who came to talk to us on a wide range of topics, but these visitors had to be good to get a sympathetic hearing for a Staff College class is, or at least was in my time, more than hard-boiled. As I have said the all-round abilities of the students were most carefully assessed by the Directing Staff; they were judged as well by the students themselves. I was interested therefore, when well on in our first year, to notice that our instructors obviously favoured one of our number as the division's No. 1 student. This we knew to be an erroneous judgment and towards the end of the year, when Colonel Villiers Stuart, our chief instructor, was leaving us, I ventured to tell him that the class disagreed with the staff assessment, and why. Villiers Stuart was not convinced but added the cogent remark that perhaps a man could run a bluff for one year but could not do so for two. At the end of our second year our judgment was sustained : by then the star boy was not the earlier choice of the Directing Staff but Archie Nye (to become Lt.-Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, lately British High Commissioner in Ottawa), who was our youngest student and possibly the most junior. Nye and I became good friends. With V. V. Pope (no relation) we took a motor trip from Antwerp to Budapest and return in the summer of 1925. A few years later we worked in adjoining rooms at the War Office. In 1940, when I was at Canadian Military Headquarters in London, I often had occasion to see him, for he was then back at the "Office," this time as Deputy Director of Staff Duties. In The Turn of the Tide, Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke speaks of how nearly Nye

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came to replacing Dill as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and also of the difficulties that might have ensued: From many points of view he would have made an excellent C.I.G.S. A first-class brain, great character, courage in his own convictions, quick worker with very clear vision. As C.I.G.S., however, he would have had the very serious handicap of being on the junior side and would consequently have had some difficulty in handling such men as Wavell, Auchinleck, Alexander, Monty, and Paget who were considerably senior to him.* Coming from such an authority, this undoubtedly is true but all the while I have felt, because of what I knew of him, that Nye would have served with great credit to himself had such a colossal appointment fallen to him. I have an incident to cite in support. Turning up at the Staff College on a Monday morning, I found that most of the week was to be devoted to the preparation of an exercise without troops. I was to be in a syndicate of six, with Nye as the head. A moment or so later, I met him in the hall when he said he would like me to act as his adjutant for the duration of the exercise. He took a little time off to study the problem before him, and then invited me to sit with him while he called in the four other members, one by one, to assign them the task of working out a particular part of the problem on the ground. The first two to come in were first-class fellows who were both destined to attain high rank in the Second World War. Each was a "soldier" in the best sense of the expression. As Nye detailed them their tasks they asked a question or two in order to be certain that they had clearly understood his mind, and then cheerfully set out to look over their allotted ground. The remaining two seemed, that day at least, to be of quite a different order of men. I was, indeed, surprised to observe that each entered the room apparently with a chip on his shoulder. Both seemed to resent being, even temporarily, under Nye's direction and they raised some objections to what they were being asked to do. Patiently, pleasantly, Nye stuck to his point, and the two eventually took their leave, their objections, and I might even say their unwillingness, having been completely overcome by the strength of Nye's personality. All this, of course, was play acting but play acting, in my experience, often differs but little from real life. As a consequence, I have always felt that had Archie Nye become C.I.G.S. *Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 1939-1943 (London 1957), p. 264.

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he would have succeeded in more than holding his own with the field commanders with whom he would have been required to deal. Nor, I am sure, would he ever have allowed himself to be "gabrowed" by the omnipotent P.M. The Directing Staff at Camberley were nearly always most meticulous in the criticism of our exercises, though now and then there was an exception to the general rule. The exercise to which I have just referred was, in my view at least, a remarkably good one for Nye had gone to great pains in its preparation. When it came back to us all that appeared on the cover sheet was the following, "Quite a good exercise, but you have neglected to make provision for horse holders." As a syndicate we should have been far better pleased if we had been unable to read our writing for red ink. Another criticism I remember was even shorter, but very much to the point. On one occasion, we were told to imagine that we were the C.I.G.S. and to draft a letter of remonstrance to the proprietor of The Thunderer, by which term Lord Northcliffe was barely concealed, in reply to a broadside on some feature of the general direction of the war effort for which the C.I.G.S. was clearly responsible. In my letter I unwisely allowed myself to make passing mention of the strain devolving on one of the Government's principal military advisers in time of war. In the margin opposite this sentence were written two words, "Don't bleat." I never forgot that one. In thinking over the nature of the instruction we underwent it seemed to me that undue emphasis was placed on staff duties as opposed to command. Invariably, I thought, the orders we submitted were criticized more from the point of view of form than of content. Again and again I observed syndicate leaders searching their minds for a "sealed pattern" solution, and asking themselves, "What is the form for this one?" Rarely do I remember officers, with the exception of those who were born commanders, acting as did Verdy du Vemois on the battle-field of Nachod. According to Marshal Foch in his Principles of War: "In presence of the difficulties which faced him, [Verdy du Vernois] looked into his own memory for an instance or a doctrine that would supply him with a line of conduct. Nothing inspired him. 'Let history and principles,' he said, 'go to the devil! after all, what is the problem?' And his mind instantaneously recovered its balance."* "Marshal Foch, The Principles of War, trans. by Hilaire Belloc (London, 1918),

p. 14.

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However this may be, a serious effort was made by our Directing Staff to assess the lessons learned in the Great War and to bring tactical doctrine into line with modern conditions. It is possible that in 1914 the British Regular Army had gone out to France and Belgium too lightheartedly. Entirely absent, I was often told, was that driving spirit throughout all ranks without which battles can hardly be won. This was to develop as time went on. The power of the German defence had made the Allied attack ineffectual and unduly costly without long and deliberate artillery preparation which denied us the invaluable advantage of surprise. The advent of the tank had been revolutionary in effect and had made it possible for mobility to be regained. The inestimable worth of armoured formations in creating opportunities for the infantry to advance and to exploit success without the fearful losses of battles like the Somme was clearly recognized and the need to think in terms of moving warfare was stressed. Over the last twenty-five years or so much has been made of General de Gaulle's book on armoured warfare (published in 1934) which the Germans were to employ so successfully against us in 1940. Yet the use of armour was being forcefully preached to us at Camberley by our chief instructor, Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, even in 1925. But, alas, "Boney" Fuller was quite an exceptional officer and provision of the necessary means to implement such theories was too long delayed. In 1927, less than two years after I had left Camberley, I was interested to read in The Times that Fuller had been appointed to command an experimental armoured brigade in the south of England. I wrote my congratulations and here in part is his reply, exquisitely Fullerian both in style and in substance: I was delighted to receive your letter of 20th October. As you say opinions are changing here but still somewhat slowly. The C.I.G.S. laid down a new doctrine of war in September last, but so far it applies only to the Experimental Brigade at Tidworth. Nevertheless, it is a step forward in the right direction, and later on, I have no doubt that when the Experimental Brigade finds its feet its ideas will percolate through the army. It has now taken about seven years to get new ideas accepted. It will, I think, take seven more to get them understood, and then a further seven before radical changes take place. It is a long process, but after all, if I am right in my surmise, to change an army completely in twentyone years is something that had never been done before. In the past many

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periods of twenty-one years have elapsed without any change whatever taking place.... Our Commandant at Camberley was Edmund Ironside (later Lord Ironside) whom I had known in 1917 and 1918, when he was G.S.O.1. of our 4th Division. Ironside was a tremendous personality and a natural commander. Standing about 6 feet 4 inches in height, and built in proportion, he always appeared as a giant among pygmies. I remember him once coming in to a 4th Division conference and, merely by his presence, transforming a somewhat despondent gathering into one brimful of confidence. He was probably at his best, not as a staff officer, but as a commander of an independent force, with instructions that allowed him a wide liberty of action. His infrequent lectures were of another quality. Once he gave a talk on "Personality in War," in which he was by no means at his best. In the course of this particular lecture he took a couple of swipes at Canadians which made the back of my neck grow a bit warm. He referred to our tour at Paaschendaele in 1917, and to Currie's action in sending some Corps engineer officers especially to reconnoitre the roads of our allotted sector, for word had come to us that Fifth Army had been somewhat negligent in their maintenance of these most essential communications. To Ironside's mind this form of spying on another formation's sector was hardly cricket, and he appeared to disregard the fact that to us Canadians war was a pretty serious business, and not a game. While, naturally, I was not involved at the time, I did remember that during that tour we had used truly colossal amounts of road metal, for it was not our habit to run the risk of being unable to get our supplies and ammunition forward in good time. Another point that had much amused Ironside was the conduct of our 4th Division when, before setting out for France, it had been reviewed by the King and then addressed by Lloyd George. The address Ironside had found somewhat boring, and he was greatly surprised on his return to the mess after the ceremony to hear his Canadian fellow officers highly praising it. "Strange fellows, these Canadians," his manner clearly implied if, indeed, he did not actually say. At the end of the lecture, Ironside, rather belligerently I thought, asked if any officer wished to comment on anything he had said. This invitation was received in silence by the entire division to whom the

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lecture, as a whole, had not greatly appealed. Then, leaning over his desk and looking down at me sitting in the front row immediately beneath him, he asked in the most friendly manner if any Canadian officer had any comment to make. I shot a quick glance to my right where Ernie Sansom was sitting, and not seeing in his attitude any intention of picking up the gauntlet, I stood up in my place and said that I was quite sure in my mind that there was far less difference, in so far as human nature was concerned, between British and Canadian troops than his words would lead the division to imply. Smilingly the Commandant said he was glad to know this, and the class was dismissed. A few moments later in the ante-room the lecture came in for a good deal of criticism and half a dozen of the fellows most sportingly offered to stand me a drink, which was all the more remarkable for at the Staff College "no treating" was the almost invariable rule. A week or so later we had a full day in the country on an outdoor exercise. During the luncheon interval, at a moment when I was strolling about with a mutton pie in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, Ironside beckoned me over and said he hoped I had not been hurt the other day when he had spoken of the Canadians. "Not a bit," I replied, "but I thought at the time you had not taken sufficiently into account the difference between your life and experience and those of your fellow Canadian officers. You were born in this country and have often enough heard the Prime Minister giving more or less the same speech. But what was the position of the others? For the most part they were men from small towns across Canada. Their fathers, or grandfathers, had emigrated many years before and in their childhood they had often heard their elders speak of the old Queen, and of the might and majesty of England. For nearly everyone of them this was their first visit to the Old Country, and so why should they not be thrilled by the events of a day which they would remember all their lives?" "You mean they were more receptive than I was," observed Ironside, to which I replied, "Precisely." And there the incident, if it can be called such, ended most amicably, except that the following day an irrepressible student came down with a cartoon depicting a portly old general with white whiskers and puffed-out cheeks, mounted on a war horse of gigantic proportions, "Impressing his Personality on his Command."

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In those days the British Regular Army was acutely aware of the fact that during the first Great War their senior commanders and staffs had suffered by reason of an inability to put a military plan clearly to their civilian masters and even, at times, to understand the politician's mind. Efforts were consequently made at the Staff College to make good this deficiency and once we were told to prepare a plan of campaign which later we should be required to expound to a mock cabinet. On the occasion of which I write Mr. Winston Churchill had been invited to come down and act as prime minister, but unfortunately he had been unable to accept. Had he come, I suppose we young men would have been given a keel-hauling long to be remembered. In the event, the role of prime minister had been filled by Admiral Sturdee who had bested von Spee at the Falkland Islands during the previous war. Sturdee was splendid, being both bland and not easy to convince. At one moment he sweetly inquired of our syndicate leader if he could guarantee the success of the plan he had just put forward. In his best barrack-square manner our spokesman brought his fist down on the table saying, "I can guarantee nothing." He was later gently chided by the Directing Staff and told that a suave diplomacy, as opposed to bluntness, was the better method of approach when dealing with a cabinet of ministers. With the inclusion of political questions in our curriculum it was inevitable that our minds should be directed to the ever-recurring problem of Imperial Defence. We were required to put in a paper under this head during the summer of 1925, with terms of reference reading: "The Empire is a brotherhood of free nations. In the event of another world war, shall we, with the existing machinery of defence, be able to control efficiently the Imperial naval, military and air forces, and, if not, what type of organization is required?" In my paper I argued that in the first sentence of the above thesis was to be found, in large measure, the answer to the succeeding question. To some minds a brotherhood of free nations suggested a picture of a joint stock company the management of which was entrusted to a board of directors enjoying the confidence of the shareholders. In my view this impression was incorrect. Rather did it seem to me that in our brotherhood of free nations each member enjoyed a complete measure of self-government, the binding tie being that all sprang, more or less, from the same stock and that each bore devotion to the

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same crown. If words had any meaning, it seemed to me that selfgovernment and central Imperial control were the reverse of synonymous; one or the other, but not both, could exist at the one time. Coming to the Canadian viewpoint, I argued that the history of our country brought into relief two outstanding facts. The first was that from the time Canada had become British the Government of the United Kingdom had been loath to loosen the guiding strings lest the young colony drift towards separation. The second fact was that successive Canadian governments, with increasing insistence, had pressed for an added measure of self-government in the fear that if this were not granted, separation would become inevitable. Today (I 925) Canada enjoyed complete autonomy and her attachment to the Empire was as great as it had ever been. Again and again, movements to bring about a truly Imperial parliament had proven still-born. As a consequence of a complete lack of any sense of insecurity, Canadian public opinion, as a whole, was, I stated, not moved to take much interest in questions of defence. Because of this a Canadian Government was unlikely to pledge in advance the degree of aid it would provide in time of war although it could not be doubted that in the event of such a contingency arising Canada would provide her full effort. Yet Canadians were in favour of close liaison between the defence forces of the Empire. We all used the same training manuals and our war establishments were those issued by the War Office. Further than this, successive Imperial Conferences had shown we were not prepared to go. But that was no reason for despair. We had come together in 1914, and there was every reason to believe that we should do so again, with all our forces serving as an integral part of a British high command. In time of peace the most that seemed to be practicable was the maintenance of close liaison by the attachment of Dominion officers to the staff of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff ( we have a full-scale Service mission in London today), the exchange of officers between the different countries making up the Empire, and, as members of Dominion governments had sat in the British War Cabinet in 1914-18, it seemed likely that they would do so again in the event of another great war. I concluded my paper with the following words: "It follows therefore that among a number of widely separated nations within the Empire, unity of effort will be obtained not by the exercise of authority

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hut by the fostering of the somewhat intangible yet immensely strong ideals held in common by British subjects. The means proposed, the formation of an Imperial General Staff (for the exchange of information) and the exchange of officers, may seem scanty machinery for so great a task, hut it is believed they will prove ample for the attainment of the object in view." In time all good things come to an end, even a tour at the Staff College. Accordingly, at the end of 1925, I set out from Camberley, accompanied by my family, on the long journey to Esquimalt, where I had been appointed General Staff Officer II, Military District No. 11. Before leaving Camberley for good I feel tempted to add still a last word or two. In many, if not most, educational establishments all is not learned from lectures, exercises, and books. The exchange of ideas with a considerable number of men who had served in so many parts of the world was always enlightening. As a consequence I made a point of dining in mess on about three weekly guest nights out of four. As we gathered in the ante-room for sherry I would look around and hit upon some dinner companion with whom I could be sure of having good talk. I thus spent many an enjoyable and profitable evening, in spite of the saltless cooking our otherwise admirable mess used to inflict upon us. I was always struck by the English officer's cult of moderation. After dinner there was often a "rag" of some kind, but it never exceeded well-defined limits. Of course, at such times there were many of us who "had wine taken," but I cannot recall anyone who could not have passed muster in a mixed company-well, nearly so. That there must have been occasional instances of over-indulgence can hardly be doubted, but perhaps, when such a contingency arose, the victim of circumstances would model himself on old Dr. Johnson who once observed, "I used to slink home when I had drunk too much." I wish I could say the same of Canadian military messes I have known. At Esquimalt my District Officer Commanding was BrigadierGeneral J. M. Ross, whom I had known quite well in our 4th Division, in which he had commanded the I 0th Infantry Brigade. Here, again, I had to learn a new branch of soldiering, namely, our NonPermanent Active Militia which in reality was the Canadian Army, for the Permanent Force numbering less than 4,000 all told sufficed only to provide staffs, instructors, and caretakers. I quickly learned to love my new surroundings. British Columbia

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was entirely new to me, but I soon found that in that delectable part of the world there were more delightful people to the square mile than, perhaps, in any other place I had known hitherto. On my first day I paid a number of calls, one being to the Naval Barracks. There, one naval officer remarked quite bluntly, "Pope, this is the best station in the world." I have never had any reason to dispute this rather sweeping statement even though at the time I was already familiar with the French cynic's remark that "All sweeping statements are wrong, including this one." But in sea-girt Victoria and Esquimalt, the landscape was glorious and the climate benign. We found ourselves five or six days away by post from Ottawa which, officially, gave us time to think for communication by long-distance telephone was not the matter of course it has since become. Moreover, on Vancouver Island the day always seemed to be in the afternoon, which in itself was agreeable. The Militia proved to be a human and absorbing study, for under our extraordinary and pretty well unique volunteer system the civic sense of individuals causes them to assume responsibilities that properly appertain to the Government. Unit training, the qualification of officers and N.C.O.'s, the Militia Staff Course by means of which selected officers are given an insight into the mysteries of staff duties, kept me pleasantly busy. The relations generally beween the Permanent Force and the NonPermanent Active Militia were on the whole quite good. This was natural enough because the latter were filled with enthusiasm-otherwise they would never have joined-and our business was to do all we could to help them on their way towards proficiency. As some of our people were not perfect, in the way either of personality or of capacity, it sometimes occurred to me that the N.P.A.M. were a patient and long-suffering race of people. But they were sportsmen, too, for when we failed them in one way or another they never openly complained. On the other hand, the quality they seemed most to appreciate was sincerity. If the instructor only showed a right attitude of mind they willingly gave of their best. In this respect, however, the N.P.A.M. seemed to be a not-too demanding plant-it throve best if the soil given it was not too rich. I used to notice that the more we did for units the more they tended to depend on us and this was not to their advantage. When we, a little heartlessly perhaps,

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required them to fend for themselves more, they became more selfreliant and this made for greater efficiency. Of course, there were many of the more senior regimental officers who because of age or other disability would have little to contribute in the event of their unit's being called out on active service. Nevertheless, these same officers were invaluable to the volunteer system as a whole. They were respected members of the community and as such could attract volunteers in time of peace and on mobilization. They were able to impart a good measure of their enthusiasm and personality to their command and thus give it a distinct character. If on reaching an overseas base in time of war it was found that they could not quite meet the demands of active service training they had of necessity to be replaced by those of their younger officers whose capacity for leadership was becoming apparent. Yet my point holds: these older and more sedentary officers had rendered their country a real service, something I fear was not always adequately recognized. Another branch of the military art to which I had now to give my attention was coast defence. Fortunately there were several officers on the station who knew their business and who were good enough to help me in my studies. Our batteries were obsolete and they were short of range, so short in fact that any up-to-date cruiser could have taken them on with impunity. Actually, our heavy guns were sited behind the dock they were supposed to defend, a point which during the Second World War President Roosevelt never failed to rub into us. There was much talk of the need for modernization but it was not to come about for more than a decade. All this, however, did not relieve me of the obligation to learn as much as I could of the subject, one of the maxims of which was that an adequate and properly sited system of coast defence was unlikely ever to fire a shot in anger for, as a gun mounted on a floating ship's platform could never be a match for one on shore firmly affixed to a block of concrete, no ship would be fool enough, as it were, to stick her head in the lion's mouth. The truth of this dictum was unassailable, but I fear that in our discussions we temporarily forgot our stubborn British predilection for frontal attacks; all the while the ill-fated Dieppe raid was lying uneasily in the womb of time. During the two autumn and winter training seasons I spent on the Coast I conducted militia staff courses at Victoria, Vancouver, and

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at Vernon in the Okanagan Valley. In Vancouver I held classes once a week, going and coming by the night boat. This gave me the entire day in the bigger city where the bulk of our urban units were located. To the Okanagan I travelled every third week-end and held classes on the Saturday afternoon and evening, and again on the Sunday morning. After the first of these marathon periods I wondered for a brief moment how it was that I was so tired. Then it dawned on me that in the space of some twenty hours I had been on my feet lecturing and answering questions for no less than seven and a half! As time went on I became leather-lunged and could take such an effort in my stride. What a smiling landscape the Okanagan presents to the visitor, not only in and about Vernon, but also to the south towards Kelowna and Penticton! It was fine ranching country but most of my friends were trying, rather unsuccessfully I fear, to confound an economic law. For I take it that land, particularly land that has been put down to fruit, can only be made to return a definitely limited standard of living. And at this it must be a whole-time job. Most of my acquaintances were Old Countrymen and, as is their habit, they had brought their English way of life along with them. Their orchards seemed to be on the small side and I was under the impression that they spent many an afternoon at their delightful little country club by the lake shore. To a man they were hard up, excepting one who ran a big vegetable farm up at Armstrong, and another who kept fourteen cows, forked manure morning and evening, and sold milk for cash every day of the year. I occasionally stayed with a militia officer who had an insurance business in Vernon. He also kept two or three cows. Business was slack and on our way in to town of a Monday morning I would find myself in the back of my host's car with one or two dozen bottles of milk between my feet and at his direction I would deposit bottles at his neighbours' gate posts as we passed by. I sometimes had a feeling that this milk trade and not insurance, kept my friend in funds. But hard up or not, it was a pleasure to work with the men of the Okanagan. They were happy and so far as I could see they got as much out of life, if not more, than did many a city professional man. But they were a mixed company. One night I had a game of bridge in the Vernon club. My companions were the local liveryman, who was both a member of the town school board and an illiterate, and two keen-witted young Englishmen in turtle-neck white sweaters. I

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afterwards learned that they were nephews of Sir Rufus Isaacs, later Lord Reading and the Lord Chief Justice of England. On Sunday afternoons I was often taken out shooting by Colonel Fitzmaurice of the local cavalry regiment. A particularly exhilarating day brought an expedition with some Victoria militia friends to Salt Spring Island. I was told to walk a trail about halfway up the mountain and I had just got started when I heard a whirr of wings behind me. Turning quickly I saw a blue grouse going down hill. I threw a shot at him which I at once realized must have been at least thirty feet too late. A little later another started down in front of me; this one I must have missed by not less than ten feet. It was enough to make me feel that the blue grouse was an impossible shot. At the top I came on another bird sunning himself in an open spot. I heard the beat of wings once more and saw him rounding a tall fir tree. Again I threw my shot, this time in a curve, and a moment later I had the extreme pleasure of picking up my first blue grouse. The following militia staff course day in Vancouver was rainy and I spent the morning in my club reading a big batch of The Times. In the correspondence section of the first issue I picked up was a letter from a sportsman stating that the most difficult bird shot in the world was one to be found in the mountains of Kashmir. This sweeping statement had drawn an immediate response. In successive issues were letters from other sportsmen to the effect that this or that bird in other parts of India, in the Middle East, or in Africa, was harder to bring down than the bird of Kashmir. The last letter in the series tickled me. "I have shot in India, the Middle East, and in Africa, and I have taken all the birds so far mentioned in this correspondence but for the most difficult shot in all this world, give me a blue grouse going down hill on Salt

Spring Island!"

I never had much luck fishing in and about Victoria. More than once I trolled for salmon in the Straits, but apparently on days when the fish, were not running. The lakes in the Highlands of Victoria were always tempting but there, where it was so easy to lose one's self, I was never successful in taking more than a very few. Gardening and bird watching were other pastimes I enjoyed and during my stay in Victoria I was also able to make some progress in the study of old silver, a hobby I had taken up a few years previously. In and about Camberley I had come across a piece or two, but on army pay and with a growing family I had to content myself with items that are

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now and then to be found in second-hand shops where the owner does not know the difference between old and "used" silver. In Victoria there were at least two auction rooms that held sales about once a month during the season. These sales always showed a few good lots in furniture, silver, or old Sheffield plate. This, of course, was because so many Englishmen had, come out to Vancouver Island, there to spend the evening of their days. I remember once losing a most delicately pierced mustard pot by Hester Bateman that I regret to this day. On this occasion I had to content myself with a pair of canoe-shaped salt cellars by John Emes, which I have been rubbing up periodically these last thirty years and more. One day one of the auctioneers, a fellow who had learned his trade in the Midlands, sought my opinion on a piece he was about to sell; I was much flattered and felt that at last I was getting on in my study of this fascinating subject. When I had been in Esquimalt about two years word came to me that I was to be transferred to Quebec, again as General Staff Officer. I therefore regretfully quitted British Columbia in April, 1928. So far as my knowledge of it goes, the Pacific Coast is one of the most attractive parts of the world. There, most people take a sane view of life and live it as it should be lived, without the hurry and bustle that, perhaps, may make for efficiency, but unhappily for high blood pressure as well. On the other hand, a regular officer serving three thousand miles from Ottawa found himself a bit removed from the sun that warms. This time my stay in Quebec was for a little less than three years, from May, 1928, to March, 1931. General Staff work in one military district was much the same as in another for in each we were governed by the policy of training established by National Defence Headquarters. In Quebec there was the difference that here we had Frenchmen to work with rather than the Anglo-Saxons of other parts of Canada. The former's approach to our unique volunteer system was different to that of those to whom the idea was quite natural. To the logical French mind provision for national defence was an obligation clearly devolving upon the central government. If, then, that government called for volunteers to do a fortnight's training each year and established rates of pay for this training, then the French soldier, who cheerfully volunteered and as cheerfully underwent military instruction, naturally and logically expected to receive the pay he had earned to do with as he pleased. At the time in English-speaking urban units pay was usually turned back into regimental funds.

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The first year we had our rural camps at Pointe St. Joseph, just below Levis, and later at Valcartier. I held the men of these country units in high regard. To begin with, being half French myself, I knew them well. Honest sons of the soil, they were easily subject to authority. They were accustomed to hard work on their fathers' farms and so militia camp, with its six or seven hours' training each day, was to them more like a picnic than work. They were anxious to learn and whatever they had to do, they wished to do well. Their units had been coming to camp for generations, and to do so had become an established tradition. The commanding officer may have been something of a patriarch, but he had the confidence of the heads of families of his county, and these were quite happy to encourage their sons to go to camp as they themselves had done when they were young. Training, however, presented certain difficulties in that all our manuals were written in English. While the words of command such as "form fours" and "right tum" were of necessity given in English, the detail was freely translated into French. Technical military French being quite another language, some of these free translations were enough to make one shudder, but they achieved their purpose. The situation, however, cried out for improvement, and I began a campaign to have manuals translated into French. Fortunately at the time Ernie Sansom was serving in the Training Directorate in Ottawa. He was gifted with understanding and between us, with the invaluable help of Major Ernest Legare who did the work, we had the little manual of Section Leading translated into the other language and issued to the troops. When the first copies came to us I paraded my instructional cadre in my office, handed each one his copy, and then told them quite bluntly that if ever I heard one of them using an English word instead of the correct French expression, I would "break" him. This interest on my part did not pass unnoticed among my French friends and, in recognition, Legare moved the Societe des Arts, Science et Lettres de Quebec to create me one of the Society's "Membres d'Honneur a Vie," an honour that I greatly appreciated. Having been responsible for the maintenance of the Citadel in 1919 and 1920, I had learned to know and to love it well. As a young engineer officer I had saved the beautiful chain gate from being remodelled by some vandal for the purpose of making the entrance to the Citadel easier of passage by three-ton lorries. Its masonry was then being re-set, and I sought and obtained General Landry's authority to have the curved entrance, with its sharp interior angle

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to the inner face of the main wall, rebuilt as it had always been hitherto. In 1930, I was able to save another ancient monument of which we have none too many. Early that year the Willingdons came down for their customary winter stay in the Vice-regal quarters. One afternoon when taking tea at the Citadel I overheard Lady Willingdon remark that it was her intention to demolish the old Detention Barrack as it impeded direct approach to the Governor General's quarters. The idea appalled me for this old masonry building was the gem of the entire enceinte, and I resolved to prevent this if I could. When the Willingdons had returned to Ottawa, I went down to see Edgar Penny, the editor of the Chronicle-Telegraph and an old McGill friend, and solicited his good offices. Penny proved himself a willing conspirator and that afternoon ran a news item to the effect that included in the programme of work for the Citadel was the removal of the Detention Barrack which had long since outlived its usefulness. As I read this I prematurely judged that Penny had entirely missed the point of my representation. But I had much to learn about newspapermen. The following day the Chronicle-Telegraph came out with a "box" prominently displayed on the front page entitled "Quebec Protests." The first sentence read, "The news that a further act of vandalism is now being contemplated has aroused general disapproval in this community." Then for about five hundred words more Penny laid about him lustily against the idea of doing away with my cherished monument. I had also sought the help of my distant cousin, Joe Barnard, the editor of L'Evenement, who did a piece admirably expressing Quebec's dislike of the proposal. I felt gratified. A month or two later when on a visit to Ottawa I gathered from a member of the Government House staff that to Lady Willingdon's regret the project could no longer be pursued. And so the old Detention Barrack still stands on its site within the Citadel walls to the delight of all who have eyes to see. In 1930, Ken Stuart, who in addition to being the Assistant Director of Military Intelligence had manfully taken on the editorship of the Canadian Defence Quarterly, announced the holding of an essay competition on: Assuming that the roles of the armed forces of Canada are derived from our obligations under the Covenant of the League of Nations; our obligations to the British Commonwealth of Nations; and our obligations in respect to National Defence:

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Discuss the roles which should be assigned to the armed forces of Canada, indicate the form which these forces should take and outline the organization required. I put in a paper and in due course it was announced that I was to share the prize with a young militia officer, a certain Lieutenant C. P. Stacey, then quite unknown to me. I felt slightly aggrieved, wondering in my ignorance how an obscure and very junior militia officer came to know enough about defence questions and our armed forces to enable him to win, or share, the prize. I know better today. Ten years later, Colonel Stacey and I worked together in Canadian Military Headquarters in London, where he built up a Historical Section and made himself thoroughly familiar with the Second World War and its developments. His first volume of our Army's Official History of the Second World War, Six Years of War, shows a mastery of the subject, skilfulness in presentation, and serenity of style, reflecting his pride in his subject and a quiet confidence in his own powers, which make it fully the equal of any official history it has ever been my lot to read. In the competition essay of 1930, as to a slight extent in 1915, and more fully in 1925, I stressed Canada's steady evolution towards independence, and I freely quoted from Sir Robert Borden's Canada in the Commonwealth, giving the steps by which our country "gradually but surely had advanced to the portal of nationhood." My conclusion, consequently, was that in deciding the action she should take in the event of war, Canada would be bound solely by the dictates of her own free will. But I hastened to add my conviction that in such a contingency we should impose upon ourselves "the role of assisting the other armed forces of the Empire to further the Imperial interest in a measure compatible with our strength and dignity as a nation." My reason for giving particular prominence to this latter point was twofold. Having been brought up by a Tory and colonial-minded father, whose views, I hasten to observe, were eminently appropriate to his age and generation, I had followed the development of the intraImperial relationship with the greatest of interest. I had in mind, too, my English army friends who-and I say it in all good nature-were thoroughly "unredeemed centralists." In spite of the example set them by their own statesmen, in spite of the proceedings of successive Imperial Conferences which were easily available to them, they continued stubbornly to hold the view that such conferences should be conducted much as are councils of war, and that British chiefs of staff

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should be empowered to issue executive orders to Dominion forces. This indeed was done a few years later at the time of Mussolini's attack on Abyssinia in 1935 but the orders were not acted upon. My father had died in December, 1926, and it was found that he had left an unfinished manuscript of his memoirs. Some friends of the family, including Mr. Mackenzie King, were of opinion that they should be completed. This task fell to me, and in the autumn of 1928 my mother sent to me in Quebec a number of tin boxes containing a considerable number of his papers. And so, in my attic, above my quarters at 87 St. Louis Street, I laboured diligently during every spare hour I could manage for the better part of two years. The manuscript as it came to me ended at 1906, the year I left home to enter McGill. I had therefore to write of events in my father's life with which I had little first-hand knowledge. I am afraid I did not make a very good job of it but such as it was it seemed to commend itself to the publishing house to which I submitted the completed work in 1930. But by then we were experiencing bad times. The book trade, I was advised, was depressed and publication was put off year after year until in 1939 the manuscript returned to me. Came the war, followed by a long absence abroad which made it a difficult matter to take up the matter of publication from a distance. In 1957, I submitted the typescript to the Oxford University Press in Toronto and the memoirs, under the title Public Servant, finally appeared in February, 1960. Because of my father's long association with Sir John Macdonald this might be an appropriate place for me to mention something about Sir John which, so far as I am aware, has never been made known. Many years ago, during the course of a conversation I had with my father regarding his association with John A., I made some reference to the election of 1891, and to the famous declaration of faith in the campaign manifesto of that year. "You know," observed my father, "I actually wrote most of that manifesto" (I naturally understood, under his chief's direction) "and when I brought it to John A. and he had read it, he said, 'Yes, Joe, this is good, but it needs a bit of a fillip at the end.'" There and then the old man took up his pen and began to write, "As for myself my course is clear. A British subject I was born-a British subject I will die," and then on to the end of the paragraph. Late in 1930, General McNaughton, our C.G.S., told me that I was to do a two years tour of interchange duty at the War Office.

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My British opposite number was to serve with the general staff officer responsible for the Preparatory Staff Course and the Militia Staff Course at the Royal Military College in Kingston. Once again I had not spent even as much as three years in an appointment nor had a move of less than three thousand miles. Once again I had to take my long-suffering family across the Atlantic. We left Quebec for London in March, sailing this time from New York. Before setting out on our journey, I satisfied a sentimental desire to bid Quebec adieu in my own way. I climbed Citadel Hill and made my way alone to take a last view of our mighty St. Lawrence flowing majestically and yet relentlessly to the sea. The river was full of floating ice, yet this did not delay the Levis ferries in their ceaseless crossings to and fro. As the stream rounds Pointe St. Joseph, two miles or so below Quebec, it bifurcates and on this winter's day it was coldly embracing the fair Island of Orleans. In summer, I well knew, its caress would be both warm and endearing. The weather this day was fine, and following the line of the Laurentians fringing the north shore, which a few months earlier had been glorious in their hues of brown, red, and gold, I made out the familiar spots of Beauport, Montmorency, Ste Anne, all the way to Cap Tourmente where each autumn the snow geese in their thousands dally a while on their way from their northern breeding grounds to their winter quarters on the Carolinian shores. It is a sight that has never failed to move me.

• • • •

CHAPTER

FIVE

• • • •

Higher Staff Training

Like the Admiralty, the War Office is a pretty old firm. And, as was once said of Lord Haig, it can take "a diel of shiftin" without giving up an inch of ground. Such, at least, was the thought implanted on the mind of a Canadian newcomer in April, 1931. Having, among other things, to do with strategy and war plans, it makes security arrangements which were impressive to me when compared with our almost total lack of similar precautions in Canada. It seemed to be quite a privilege to be allowed to enter such an august institution. Each officer, and I take it each civil servant as well, was given a pass that had to be shown either to the "Bobby" or to the cluster of old soldiers at the door. Visitors were escorted to their destinations and, when the business in hand had been completed, they were accompanied to the exit by their temporary hosts. In some ways it struck one as being a holy of holies. I was assigned to the Canadian chair in S.D. 2, a section of the Directorate of Staff Duties, my predecessor being J. K. Lawson. For the greater part of the Long Armistice this was judged to be the most appropriate posting for the Canadian interchange officer, though in his time there Harry Crerar had served in the Directorate of Military Operations. To our directorate fell a wide range of duties, not least of which was the task of co-ordinating General Staff opinion on the proposals and business with which that branch of the staff had to deal. "Coordinate" is not an easy word. While, generally, it evokes the idea of bringing things or ideas into proper relation, there can be misunderstanding as to what this implies. At the War Office the business of co-ordination worked easily and well. It was otherwise when, years later, we established a similar directorate at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. Then much confusion arose. To some minds

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"co-ordination" implied a measure of command, which was wrong. Others were frank enough to admit that they were not clear just how co-ordination should be effected. It was therefore with no little amusement that in Speaking Frankly, by James F. Byrnes, sometime Secretary of State in Washington, I came across his expressed desire, "I want to avoid the words 'liaison' and 'co-ordination.' They would destroy even a good man." In S.D. 2, I found myself in a large room seating five officers, three G.S.O.'s II and two Ill's. The G. II's were Vyvyan Pope and a little later, D. C. Watson, both old Staff College friends, and myself. Pope was responsible for General Staff policy as to equipment; Watson's principal task was the composition of the Field Force. Each had a G. III to assist him. Our Director was Major-General Sir Ivo Vesey and, later, one of the Bonham Carters. When the change-over of directors took place Vesey, in outlining our respective duties to his successor, observed, "Pope, the Canadian, does the chores," a remark I read with delight. In the first place it hit the nail squarely on the head and, secondly, it showed me that this good old English word, in such common use in Canada, had ( with but a change of vowel) not entirely fallen into disuse in the land from which it had sprung. Vyvyan Pope was a dear friend. Brilliantly able, he was a man of great virtue. During the war he rose to the rank of lieutenant general but, most unfortunately, he was killed in an air accident in North Africa in 1942. Daryl Watson capped a long and distinguished career by becoming Quartermaster General, and on his retirement from the Army assumed an important position with British Railways. One of the first of my "chores" was final proof-reading for a new edition of the Manual of Combined Operations. While all good sense demands that a Military (in our time Military spelt with a capital "M" comprised all three fighting services) operation should come under a single command, Service feelings, and I might say jealousies, ran high and apparently nothing short of preternatural strength of character could have obliged the several commanders in a combined operation wholeheartedly to accept the undisputed leadership of one of their number. Shortly after the new manual had been distributed, a personal letter to Ivo Vesey from one of our commanders abroad was placed on a file that duly passed over my desk. After a lapse of more than twenty-five years I cannot hope to be able to render it verbatim, but it ran more or less this wise. "A few days ago we received our

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copies of the new Manual of Combined Operations and last night, greatly interested, I sat down to read it through. This I did until I had got to page 7, where I learned to my horror and disgust that in future the command of a combined operation is to be entrusted to a soviet of the commanding officers of the three Services. When I read this, I threw the book as far away from me as I could, and I will never look at it again. Oh! my dear lvo how could you?" The obstinacy of our Services in this matter bafHed me for, when everything had been said and done, we all served the one country and we all should have been anxious to do so to the utmost of our powers. What bafHed me still more was that our governments allowed such a disastrous state of affairs to continue. Shortly after the Second World War a British chief of staff told me that, as a result of his experience, he was almost prepared, but not quite, to recommend that all three Services be put into the same uniform. With the Germans, whom we know to be superlatively good soldiers, no such problem has ever been allowed to arise. Their manuals, as I remember them, simply laid down that for a combined operation there should be one commander, and there was an end of the matter. I suppose that many more years must pass before Service perversity in this respect will have been overcome. My tour at the War Office was to me quite as valuable as another Staff College course. The British colonial empire is extensive and a study of the problems besetting its Army brings one pretty well to every part of the world. The Directorate of Staff Duties had an interest in certain aspects of the security of defended ports abroad, of distant oilfields, of colonies, and of protectorates. At the least, this interest taught me much in the way of strategy, and also of geography. I had occasion to think back to my days in S.D. 2 when, in 1941, we sent our troops to Hong Kong. One aspect of War Office organization that intrigued me was the number of civil servants it employed. Indeed, I once noted that for every army officer there were about two, of more or less equivalent status, on the civil side. Over one hundred of these were administrative officers, each of whom was an honours man from a well-known university. The Finance branch, which served under the Permanent Under Secretary of State for War (in Canada, the equivalent would be Deputy Minister), was all powerful. In my time the P.U.S. was both a member and secretary of the Army Council. As such, his collabora-

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tion was essential for the transaction of business. No proposal involving expenditure could win approval without having been subjected to financial criticism and this from the most junior levels all the way to the top. This was the P.U.S.'s one weapon. It was wielded with great skill and effectiveness and, wise man that he was, he well knew that he needed no other. In Canada, the old Department of Militia and Defence, followed later by the Department of National Defence, had been pretty well modelled on the War Office system in which the Army Council (of which, as I have noted, the P.U.S. was a member and secretary) made its recommendations to the Secretary of State for War. But I have always thought that in Canada we had erred in making the Deputy Minister of National Defence vice chairman of the old Militia Council thus apparently giving him a status of vice, or quasi, minister which in a military as distinct from civil departments of government he is not, or should not be. Moreover, for some misguided reason it has seemed to be held that the deputy head should have military experience and carry military rank. Never has there been a greater error. The deputy minister is a civil officer, and he has a civil function . It is no part of his business to give military advice to the minister. On the contrary, he is responsible for the civil administration of the department, and for finance in all its aspects. In the thirties, by reason of quite special circumstances, he was at one time practically crowded off the scene which was unfortunate, at another he had been allowed to elevate himself to a position more or less equivalent to that of a civilian chief of staff, and strove to constitute himself the channel of communication between the military staffs and the minister. All this would have been ludicrous had it not been tragic. At the War Office, all four principal staff officers were members of the Army Council, the C.I.G.S. being merely primus inter pares, and it was soon made known to me that if the primus was of importance, so, too, were the pares. I was told that some years previously a C.I.G.S. had bluntly stated that he desired a certain course of action to be taken. One of his military colleagues, however, had demurred and had reminded the C.I.G.S. that as the matter was one requiring Army Council approval, its concurrence, or at least that of a majority of members, was required before it could be said that a favourable decision had been reached. In my time the Army Council hardly ever formally sat as such.

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Indeed, I had gathered that it was only called to meet about once a year so that continuity might be preserved. Matters to be dealt with were discussed in a series of minutes on the file and the requisite measure of agreement having been reached, action followed. In all this the P.U.S. was an essential contributing member, and his participation as financial critic was, at times, the overriding influence. He had, therefore, no need to assume that he was an expert strategist, or that he was competent to judge on matters of army organization. My brother officers at the War Office used at times to rail against "Finance," but I always took the view that if the military could not justify a proposed course of action to keen, knowledgeable, and experienced minds, then in all probability the proposal, as stated, must have left something to be desired. It should be observed that the members of the finance directorates were War Office men. Their responsibility was to see to it that the Vote was spent in accordance with the will of Parliament. One wise official once said to me that agreement having been reached within the War Office, it was then the duty of "Finance" to do battle with the Treasury on behalf of the Department. I remember an example of the influence of "Finance" that greatly interested me. I had been asked to sit in on a committee that was to pass on a new establishment for an engineer unit at one of the Home defended ports. Two units had been merged into one and as a consequence the new establishment had been made necessary. The chairman blithely assumed that the matter was merely one of routine and that he could take it that the proposed establishment met with general approval. The military members concurred and I, who knew nothing of the background, judged that all was in order. The Finance representative, however, quietly observed that there was one aspect to which he was unable to agree. The chairman set out to ride roughshod over him, but the civil official calmly held his ground. It appeared that in working out the new establishment someone had tried to slip in a few extra men that the Royal Engineers had lost as a consequence of a decision previously taken in quite another connection. The Finance man observed that he was confident that the question could be resolved were he to have a half-hour's conversation with the officer commanding the unit, who was present at the meeting. Decision was therefore put off until the following week. At the next meeting a revised establishment, eliminating the greater part of the unjustified increase, was presented and duly approved.

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I was much impressed by this example of the usefulness of financial criticism and by the particularly able manner in which it had been expressed. It has to be remembered that a staff officer's tour at the War Office was for four years, while the civilian of whom I speak had already served for an unbroken period nearly three times that length. He had therefore acquired a store of knowledge and experience that few army officers could hope to equal. This civilian's name was Archibald Rowlands. Shortly after this incident I sought him out, and little by little we became firm friends. We met again at the Imperial Defence College where I worked with him whenever I could arrange to do so. Rowlands went on to enjoy a brilliant career. He acted for some years as financial adviser to the Defence Department of the Government of India. Later he served at the Air Ministry and during the war he was one of Lord Beaverbrook's principal officers, at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. If I have dealt with this point at some length it is because the situation contrasted strongly with the pitifully small civilian executive staff at N.D.H.Q . in my time. There was a financial superintendent, my excellent friend R. P. Brown, but he was a Treasury officer and not strictly a departmental official. On the Deputy's side of the house there was hardly an official of even middle seniority. The essential civilian contribution to our work was therefore almost non-existent, or at one time, as I have previously remarked, overwhelming. Both situations were bad. What I have tried to show is that there was a need for a strong civilian component within the Department which, while limited as to range, would he practically unlimited as to power within its own field. All this, of course, is subject to the proviso that the Minister is entirely free to seek advice wherever he may please, inside or outside the Department. In recent years, of which, of course, I have no direct knowledge, we seem to have developed a trend towards the American model in our higher military staff organization, with the institution of a Chief of Staff who is senior in status to the other principal staff officers. While I belonged to an older school, I always freely granted the strength of the argument for the change. But however this may be I am confident that there has never been a civilian official in the War Department at Washington who could succeed in taking it on himself to participate in the formulation of technical military policy, or to constitute himself the channel through which the Chief of Staff's papers should be transmitted to the Secretary of War.

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The War Office wheels ground slowly but they ground exceeding small. Any proposal respecting organization or equipment had to be examined in the light of conditions prevailing at Hong Kong, Aden, the Gold Coast, and all the way up to Murmansk. As a consequence, it often seemed to me that an idea, sparkling with originality when first prop0sed, came out of the mill as flat as a pancake. In view of the range of the Army's commitments, this was perhaps inevitable, but I often looked for signs of more energetic action. Everything seemed to be so very "sound," a word which already at the Staff College I had begun to dislike intensely. To my mind it seemed to damn with exceeding faint praise. Caution, of course, is an essential virtue, but it can be carried a little far. What our American friends call a "calculated risk" has much to commend it. The officer who instinctively goes to the book to seek the answer to the problem in hand will probably not make obvious mistakes, but he will fail to inject something of himself and his personality into his solution. I was at the War Office when the Visiting Forces Act was passed by the House of Commons in Westminster (a complementary act was later passed in Canada). I mention this merely to suggest that, so far as I have ever known, this bit of legislation was entirely the work of the legal pundits. I never heard a word of it during its period of gestation. Nor did I ever meet a British Army officer who, on the outbreak of war, knew what its provisions might be. Actually, it gave a legal basis for the relations between individuals of the several Commonwealth armed services and, as well, for the command relationship. This latter provision I later felt to be a mistake as it made for what I thought to be a great deal of unnecessary mumbo jumbo in placing our troops under British command. For instance, in July, 1943, when on a visit to Ottawa from Washington, Reg. Orde, the Canadian Judge Advocate General, told me with a grin that he had built up a file nearly two inches thick to put our troops under British Command in the Mediterranean. "Did you need to do all that?" I inquired." Not at all," he replied, "but they wanted it, and so I gave it to them." Surely in all cases an exchange of telegrams between our governments would have served the purpose equally well and have had the important merit of simplicity. We were later to pass a series of orders in council to put our troops forming part of the Attu expedition under United States command. On their part our American friends did nothing, our desire to take part in the proposed operation being all in the way of legal basis they desired.

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In expressing this view, I realize that I may be quite out of date. Over the years as our roots have gone down deeper and deeper into our native North American soil, I have noticed a growing insistence on having a specific rule or regulation to govern our actions. The old English habit of working by instinct and tradition, of playing the piece by ear, so to speak, is slowly fading in Canada. The events which led up to the British general election of 1931 I followed with much interest and, in one instance, with some amusement. On my arrival in England we had taken a house in Wimbledon. Shortly after moving in I received a form from the local electoral officer, one commonly used by Army officers on change of station. I duly replied that as I was a Canadian officer, it must have been sent to me in error. The reply was terse and prompt: in effect, "to get on with it, or else." Having more discipline in me than some of my good friends would have been inclined to admit, I did as I was bid but not without some apprehension. As a Canadian I was not unfamiliar with the cry of the two Canadas of a century before, "No taxation without representation," to the justice of which I fully subscribed. But I feared the corollary, "No representation without taxation," might well hold in law. I was therefore most circumspect on election day, at least to start with. That evening, however, my wife and I decided to go to watch the returns being Hashed on the screen at one of the music halls in Leicester Square. As we stood at the comer awaiting our bus, a passing car asked if we would like a lift. As fate would have it our benefactor was an election worker and when I said that we had not voted I was subjected to an exhortation. Over the campaign the feelings of even an onlooker had been stirred, so when we were dropped before the voting place, a short hundred yards from our station, we duly went in, and helped to elect our man with a majority of some 25,000 votes. The Income Tax people did not come for me after all. My two happy and profitable years at the War Office passed all too quickly, and it was with regret that I parted with many friends at the end of March, 1933, to take up an appointment at National Defence Headquarters. One of my last tasks was to draft a letter to Canada on some minor routine matter. A few weeks later I found myself drafting the reply in Ottawa. During the summer of 1933, I served in "Military Training," which at the time was not one of N.D.H.Q.'s most effective directorates. After the intense interest of my work at the War Office, I found dull the routine work of checking proceedings of boards of officers, in

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order to make sure that the president had been a field officer and not a captain, as was sometimes almost unavoidable. I suppose that regulations are written to be observed, but this observance can, I think, sometimes be too meticulous. Once, at Esquimalt, I had to do with a Militia Staff Course student who was easily the keenest and most efficient militia officer with whom I have ever had to deal. But in the First World War this unfortunate man had lost a leg. Now one of the requirements for eligibility to attend the practical portion of the course at Sarcee Camp in the summer was possession of the proficiency in riding certificate (R). As it was patently impossible for the officer in question ever to become a passable horseman, I had recommended to N .D.H.Q. that an exception be made. The reply simply said that the regulation was to be observed. So, in the circumstances, I assembled a board of officers of which, having field rank, I constituted myself President, hoisted my candidate on a horse, and told him to walk the beast once round the manege. This done, we promptly passed him and a few weeks later he accompanied me to Calgary, did well in his course, and for years afterwards continued to render his unit, and also the militia as a whole, really invaluable service. After I had been in Military Training a few short months, the wheel of fortune turned in a manner very much to my advantage. General McNaughton, the C.G.S., had found himself obliged to look about for someone to fill in during Harry Crerar' s absence at the Imperial Defence College in 1934. I was hit upon and some time in the autumn of 1933 I crossed the hall on the second floor of the old Woods building and settled down in temporary charge of Operations. Here the work was fascinating, and there was much of it. By that time McNaughton had pretty well brought his scheme for the reorganization of the Non-Permanent Active Militia to completion (it was eventually brought into effect in December 1936) and in November, 1933, he convoked a Conference of Defence Associations in Ottawa so that he might explain its scope and purpose to a representative body of senior militia officers. This reorganization scheme requires a word of explanation here also. After the Great War of 1914-18, a new Militia organization of eleven divisions and four cavalry divisions had been given approval. These figures had been set as being the maximum force that could be mobilized and maintained by Canada's then available manpower in a war fought within our own borders. At the same time it was realized that a future Canadian expeditionary

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force beyond our borders was unlikely to exceed six divisions and one cavalry division. In the interest of economy and to bring the strength of the Militia down to more reasonable proportions, for the idea of our having to fight a major war on our own soil was absurd, General McNaughton now proposed that the N.P.A.M. should be reduced to this lower figure. As can readily be imagined this reduction in strength would necessitate the amalgamation of a considerable number of units and the disbandment of others. Unfortunately, Ontario was called upon to suffer the most in this respect. This was because, after the First World War, the Militia in Ontario had undergone greater expansion, in some respects over-expansion, than it had in the other provinces, and especially in Quebec. Several representatives at the Conference of Defence Associations were anything but pleased at this state of things and some harsh words of criticism were directed from Parliament Hill, where we met, northwards and eastwards across the Ottawa River. Most distressingly, there was a notable lack of French-speaking officers at this conference, and it fell to the C.G.S. to explain the situation to a somewhat unreceptive audience. This he did manfully and, needless to say, most ably. But for the time being, not to much apparent avail, for feelings had been stirred. As I returned from the meeting, which I had attended in a secretarial capacity, I felt depressed at this tum of events which, I thought, showed a considerable lack of understanding of the problem resting on McNaughton's shoulders. It therefore occurred to me to attempt a paper on the French Canadian and the N.P.A.M. Stirred up as I was, the task did not prove difficult. As the subject in its general lines and the feelings it engenders have been endemic in Canada these last two centuries, and will probably continue so for generations yet to come, I quote my analysis almost in full. THE FRENCH CANADIAN AND mE

N.P.A.M.

I. HISTORICAL

I. Establishment of the Colony French Canada dates from 1608. It is, therefore, well into the fourth century of its existence, and no longer may French Canadians be regarded as a youthful people. The history of the French regime is one of a long struggle against adversity. The small handful of colonists had to contend against a hard

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climate and their still harder Indian enemies, whilst the assistance of which they were in need during the greater part of this period was but spasmodically granted by a forgetful Court at Versailles almost entirely preoccupied with European affairs and, perhaps, too intent on the pursuit of pleasure. Added to this, the story is one of continued con8ict between Church and State for while the primary object of the settlement was the foundation of a Christian colony in the New World, the desire for private gain induced many of the laity, official and otherwise, to undo by their trading activities the beneficial work of the missionaries. It was only by overcoming many difficulties that the French colonists succeeded in subjecting rude nature to their bare necessities and, in the process, they laid the foundation of that sturdy character which distinguishes them today. . . . 2. Growth of the French Canadian Race The extraordinary growth of the French on this continent is also to be noted. During the French regime not more than 6,000 emigrants came out from Old France. In 1759, when the colony passed under British rule, the population did not exceed 60,000. They numbered some 400,000 in 1840, when Lord Durham, in his admirable report, stated his opinion that under the influence of a judicious How of immigration from Great Britain one might confidently look forward to a day when the French Canadians would have been absorbed by the predominating English-speaking population, and as a separate people would have ceased to exist. Today, the French population is upwards of 3,000,000 and a considerable number of their offspring have settled in the New England states. In temperament and general philosophy of life these people remain as French as were their forefathers who first came to this country. 3. From the Conquest to the Present Day It is frequently said, and with good reason, that Great Britain treated her new subjects with wise generosity. They were granted religious freedom, the privilege to continue the use of their own law, and, from the very beginning, they were called upon to take their part in the government of the colony. But this does not complete the picture. After the conquest many, perhaps most, of the upper classes returned to the Old World and France forgot her former subjects who had passed under an alien rule. The lot of those who remained was not altogether enviable. Under a strange form of government, without capital, deprived of contact with la mere patrie, they were impotent to prevent the direction and control of commerce from passing into the hands of the English merchant who appears to have been actuated by a belief that to the victor belongs the spoils. In these circumstances, they were forced to rely entirely upon themselves and, prompted by the instinct of self-preservation, the object they set themselves was to remain French, to retain their individuality, their language, their customs, their religion, in short-their tradition.

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During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this object was kept steadily in view. Without capital they were thrown back on such outlets as could be found in the liberal professions, the Church, and the cultivation of the soil; in this latter occupation, through hard labour and a copious Bow of honest sweat they could create and accumulate wealth by the only means then open to them. And to this end they were exhorted by the clergy. In fact, it is perhaps not too much to say that without the unceasing encouragement of the clergy, the French Canadians' effort might have been in vain. Today, the French Canadian is serenely conscious of having achieved his object. This realization began to dawn upon him towards the beginning of the present century and, curiously enough, it appears to have been conclusively brought home to him during the local troubles which arose during the Great War. On this score, his mind is now at rest. He is confident that his race occupies an almost unassailable position and, with the accumulated savings of 150 years, he feels that in all security he may branch out into the wider domains of commerce and assume in the business world that position which, from the beginning, he has enjoyed in the political sphere. 4. Education As has been indicated, the campaign for the preservation of the racial characteristics of the French Canadian was largely directed by the clergy who made as much use of the teacher's rostrum as they did of the pulpit, for the Church has ever been solicitous of education. The system has undergone little change with the passage of time. Secondary education is still based on the centuries-old cours classique which, up to a generation or so ago, was considered in all countries to be essential to a sound education. In other parts of Canada particular attention is paid to mathematics and to subjects specifically related to commerce. In French Canada the situation is otherwise, and students almost without exception are grounded in Latin and Greek, logic, rhetoric, and philosophy; the study of higher mathematics is reserved for those destined for the engineering profession who proceed to the Ecole Polytechnique after the completion of their arts course. It is to be noted that there are no less than 22 classical colleges dotted here and there throughout French Canada.

5. Characteristics

To complete this section there remains to attempt a short summary of the French Canadian's character. As has been indicated, he has throughout his history been largely under clerical inBuence and it is but natural that he should possess a large measure of those virtues which of their nature constitute the very basis of a Christian community. The French Canadian is a docile subject. He has an inherent respect for constituted authority, both civil and religious. He is law-abiding as a rule, generally thrifty, hard working and self-reliant to such an extent that he is able,

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on a farm of moderate size, to raise and educate a large family and, at the same time, to put by a reasonable competence against old age. He is a good neighbour in that he minds his business, but it may be observed that he has a weakness for litigation and a strong predilection for party politics. On the other hand, it is perhaps not inappropriate to say that he suffers from the defects of his qualities. The preceding paragraph reads almost as if it were the description of a feudal people. And this, precisely, is the reason why the French Canadian has been able to develop and retain these virtues: he has made no attempt to keep abreast of what is termed modern thought and modern progress. Throughout his history he has concentrated on the preservation of his individuality and, in consequence, his outlook is somewhat more local than is perhaps desirable. In any event, he does not seem to be greatly interested in international affairs; to him Europe is a far-off world with which he does not feel directly concerned. An estimable citizen in his own community, he does not speculate on the implications which result from his country's membership in the association of nations known as the British Empire. Nor should this occasion surprise. The Imperial tie derives its strength largely from sentiment. It is a blood tie, and the French Canadian is not an Anglo-Saxon. II. THE NON-PERMANENT ACTIVE MILITIA

6. The N.P.A.M. Generally The Non-Permanent Active Militia is an organization evolved by Angh Saxons and is peculiarly well suited to the genius of that people. It is basically a voluntary system, the members of which enlist for a term of years and undergo annually a stated period of training, either at camp or at local headquarters. In a happily situated country such as Canada, the Militia system is adequate to her needs-primarily for the reason that her needs are small. But the point to be noted is that should a unit aspire to a really satisfying standard of efficiency, much more is necessary than the 10 or 12 days of annual training for which Parliament makes provision. Now the curious thing is that among English-speaking city corps this additional training is freely given and in generous measure. Thus without additional expense to itself the State obtains more than it demands; it has capitalized on the enthusiasm of the individual. This extraordinary condition is probably unparalleled in any other civilized nation not forming part of the British Empire. It is not easy to assess the underlying reasons which make such a state of affairs possible. In the first place, many persons join the Militia in the belief that they are thereby discharging a public duty. Others see in it an agreeable hobby. Another class may be attracted by the display of uniform, the satisfaction derived from public parades and by the enhanced position in the community to which they may arise through their associations

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with the Militia. Whatever the reasons may be, it would be invidious as well as unnecessary for the purpose of this present inquiry to endeavour to ascertain the part played by each of these motives. It is sufficient to say that each, or a combination of all, at times is noticeable.

7. The N.P.A.M. and the French Canadian

The French Canadian by reason of his upbringing and his tradition is fully seized of the fact that the duty of bearing arms in the defence of the State is one of the first duties of citizenship. But he is of the opinion that the provision of the means, as well as the enactment of the necessary legislation to this end, is one of the primary duties of statesmanship. As Canadians generally are unaware of any menace to their security, how much more so is this true in the case of the French Canadian who, by reason of his restricted outlook, is not conscious of, and would perhaps be unwilling to admit, any obligation arising from Canada's position as a member of the British Empire. The motives for joining the Militia enumerated above, with possibly one exception, appeal to the French Canadian as much as they do to his English compatriot. The exception is, of course, that the French Canadian is unable to visualize the possibility of the use of armed force in Canada; with its use elsewhere he does not feel concerned. And so, being a realist, his reasoning appears to be as follows: "The Government in fulfilling its responsibility of providing for national security has done so through the medium of a volunteer army and has laid down that the members thereof shall train for, say twelve days each year. For one reason or another, the militia movement appeals to me and I am quite prepared to engage myself for a term of years and to carry out whatever may be required of me in a loyal manner. But you say that I should not content myself with doing only what is laid down, but that I should exceed this two-fold. My reply is simply that the Government, through its military advisers, must well know what is required to produce a force of the desired degree of efficiency, and if twenty or thirty days' training each year is necessary, why let them say so and make the necessary provision." It is difficult to perceive any flaw or gap in this reasoning on the part of a Frenchman, who, be it remembered, is not an Anglo-Saxon. The foregoing applies to city corps only, for throughout Canada, so far as is known, rural units do not do more than the usual period of training.

8. The Hope for a Higher Efficiency

It is now pertinent to inquire whether or not city units in French Canada may be induced to attain a higher degree of efficiency by means of additional training without pay. An answer to this question is not easily found. Nothing is impossible provided a determination to succeed exists. But, on the other hand, the conditions described have existed without change over a period of many years. It is quite possible that the continued example of sister English-speaking units may, in future, exert some in-

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8uence. But the superiority of English units lies mostly in the direction of smartness and excellence in close order drill, neither of which particularly appeals to the French mind. Improvement might be obtained were it possible in the future to widen the range of the selection of officers for the command of French districts so as to include officers who had had experience of command elsewhere in Canada. But it is felt that the time must be awaited when all city corps will be required to carry out training in central camps where comparisons must unavoidably be made, where the spirit of emulation will be developed, and where training of a nature designed to lead towards a real efficiency can be demanded. If and when this important step has been taken the future of the Militia can be faced with confidence. Unfamiliarity with Anglo-Saxon ways is not necessarily indicative of inefficiency. In June of 1930, after a lapse of ten years, a district camp which included a brigade of rural infantry was held at Valcartier. During its progress the camp was visited by a senior officer who had formerly held the command of districts in Ontario and elsewhere. The officer in question spent a full day watching the troops at their work. He appeared to be quite pleased with what he had seen, and it was reliably reported that when he took his departure he observed that what had astounded him the most was that the rural infantry he had seen were better than rural infantry of M.D. No. 2 (Toronto).

9. The Future At a time when a general reorganization of the Non-Permanent Active Militia is under consideration, a forecast of the future usefulness and the availability of the French Canadian militia in the event of an emergency arising is unavoidable. The appreciation on which the proposed reorganization has been based rules out the probability of the Militia being required to fight in Canada. Rather does the plan contemplate the organization of a force capable, on mobilization, of producing the miximum expeditionary force which this country is ever likely to dispatch overseas in the event of war. Now it may be stated quite simply that the writer, for reasons that have already been indicated, is of opinion that the availability of the French Canadian militia units for service overseas, either today or in the fairly remote future, will not be as high as will that of units located in other parts of Canada. But this conclusion, which may or may not be well founded, appears clearly to indicate the lines on which the proposed militia reorganization should be established. The proposition may be put forward that Canadians are one people composed of two distinct races. If this is not strictly true in every sense it is surely the ideal to which we should devote our best efforts. Consequently, the cardinal principle which should govern Canadian statesmanship should be to avoid any action which might tend to accentuate the natural divergence between the two racial points of view. It then indubitably follows that the policy

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of wisdom, and anything to the contrary would be little short of disastrous, will be to distribute the incidence of the proposed militia organization over the entire country proportionally to the population of its various parts. It is to be remembered that the dispatch of the entire force overseas would require many months to accomplish. There would, therefore, be ample time for the more backward units to complete mobilization before they would be required to proceed abroad. And in the event of a lack of response in certain quarters then, and then only, should the raising of units of which the country is deficient be directed elsewhere. A generation has elapsed since Canada was last involved in war, but the mistakes then committed are still vividly remembered. If the experience of 1914-1918 is of any value it should surely point to the necessity of avoiding anything which not only might divide the country into two camps, but which might gratuitously provide one party or the other with some hurt, real or imaginary, the effect of which would be to impair the strength of the national effort.

I submitted this paper to the C.G.S. who was good enough to say he liked it. But, with one exception, I never heard more about it, and I do not think it was ever given other than a limited circulation. However in 1958 a chance acquaintance told me he had reason to know that during the war a copy had come to Mr. King's attention and that he had thought well of it. Perhaps this should not occasion surprise for anything seeking to avert a division of public opinion was bound to gain that statesman's commendation. Perhaps at this point a more general word about National Defence Headquarters in the thirties would be in order. It vastly differed from the Army Headquarters of today. To such an extent is this so that it is extremely difficult to convey a true picture to the minds of those who were not in a position to take an informed interest in public affairs a full generation ago. Prior to 1939, the strength of our Permanent Force was less than 4,000 all ranks, of whom not more than 400 were officers. At the present time there are nearly twice that number of officers serving in Ottawa alone. In 1930-3 l, the enrolled strength of the N.P.A.M. was about 50,000 all ranks, a number that today is roughly matched by the number of officers and other ranks serving in our active forces. In those days the League of Nations was in its heyday and the spirit of pacificism pervasive. Defence was unpopular in the public mind and as politicians (and I use the term with respect) are of necessity responsive to public opinion the governments of those days gave little heed to defence matters. For the year 1932-33, in the

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depths of the depression, the total defence vote amounted to little more than 14 million dollars and this was supposed to maintain not only an army, but a navy and air force as well. Today the provision for defence under all heads greatly exceeds one hundred times this amount. With a distinctly adverse public opinion, and a budget in serious deficit, both of which factors compelled governments to grant defence an extremely low order of priority, our meagre staffs could, broadly speaking, do little more than keep the administrative machine slowly ticking over. While the C.G.S. and his Directorate of Military Operations were burning in their desire that more in the way of defence preparation be made, the other branches of the staff were constrained to deal only with qualification for rank, the appointment and promotion of officers, and, to some degree, the maintenance of military properties. Morale was at a low ebb and the public cared not at all. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that there had been little or no change, in the minds either of the public or of governments since thirty years previously when, in 1902, Sir Wilfrid Laurier had admonished Lord Dundonald, "You must not take the Militia seriously.... "* It is not surprising, therefore, indeed it was altogether inevitable, that on mobilization in 1939, it took our civilian army, for such to all intents and purposes it could only be, such a painfully long time to round into shape. In trying to recall the atmosphere in which we struggled during those lean years I have been obliged largely to depend on memory for at that time I had not the wit to keep a diary. But Colonel Stacey in his Six Years of War has almost providentially come to my assistance. What memories his first chapter evokes! Here are extracts he gives from C.G.S. papers: As regards reserves of equipment and ammunition, the matter is shortly disposed of. Except as regards rifles and rifle ammunition, partial stocks of which were inherited from the Great War-there are none. There is not a single modern anti-aircraft gun of any sort in Canada. Not one service air bomb is held in Canada. A few respirators, sufficient for the supply of a limited number to the Permanent Force, are held for training. None is available for mobilization .... t ''"Lt.-Gen. the Earl of Dundonald, My Army Life (London, 1926), p. 191. tC. P. Stacey, Six Years of War (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1955), pp. 6, 8.

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They all ring familiarly to my ears. In memorandum after memorandum we reiterated these and other statements, we chopped and changed them about, but to little avail. During the depression the Government, beset by the problem of maintaining national solvency, was, understandably, quite immovable. From my modest point of view, it seemed to be even unapproachable. No matter how well disposed the minister of the day may have been he was powerless to help. The coming of the war storm was plain to see to all but the perversely blind, but it was not until nearly the end of the Long Armistice that National Defence began to make a little headway. Until 1937, we entirely failed to get anything in the way of a general statement of Government policy on defence which, at the least, would have enabled us to base our particular recommendations on some idea as to what the Government might accept. A start had been made on improving our West Coast defences, to gain approval for which we were forced back to the inane thesis that in the event of a war between the United States and Japan it would be incumbent on Canada to defend her neutrality! To my mind and, I am sure, to that of the entire General Staff, this idea that it might some day become incumbent on Canada to defend her neutrality was the height of absurdity. For it was clear that should the United States become involved in a war in the East our West Coast, being pretty well on the great circle route leading from the United States to Japan, would immediately become of vital importance to the former in the prosecution of the war. Consequently, it was equally clear that if in such circumstances Canada should attempt to remain neutral and aloof, our American neighbours would ride roughshod over us and make use of our territory and facilities as it pleased them. And, as far as I could see, they would be entirely justified in doing so. I can recall General McNaughton once remarking that in such an eventuality we should be in the war within thirty days. For my part I judged the time interval would be closer to thirty hours. But then, as I have so often noted, the politician must attune announced policy to the receptivity of the public mind and in 1937, the proclaimed idea of the maintenance of Canadian neutrality was presumably merely in conformity with the requirements of practical politics. Hitler, who had come to power in 1933, on March 7, 1936, reoccupied the Rhineland. On this date a second World War became inevitable. From that time onward it seemed to us, to me at any rate,

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that our Atlantic coast had superseded British Columbia in military importance, yet so late in the day as April, 1939, the Minister of National Defence still gave priority to the West. I felt as if we were working in a vacuum and wondered if the Minister even read the memoranda with which he was continually being bombarded. He may well have done so, but, on the other hand, I retain the clear impression that the gulf separating the public officials from the Cabinet they were so sincerely anxious to serve, was well-nigh unbridgeable. What and how much the Government would take were questions to which it seemed impossible to get an answer. In thinking these thoughts I was well aware that a Government is most certainly under no obligation to take its permament officials entirely into its confidence. Nevertheless, I felt we were left to grope in the dark too much. I could easily see the acute political wisdom underlying Mr. King's continual reiteration of "Parliament will decide," wearisome though this might be, for the paramount obligation resting upon a prime minister is to preserve an undivided public opinion. In this he was eminently successful, and for this we can never be too grateful. With a horizon steadily growing darker before us we in our Department did well, I believe, to be concerned, but perhaps it is the lot of public officials to become aware of the need for remedial action long before it becomes politically expedient, or even possible, to take it. Patience, in all walks of life, is a useful virtue. In politics, I imagine, it is essential. Somewhere I have read that Lloyd George, who as a gifted politician was not unaware of the value of a sharp sense of timing, was in the habit of saying, when pressed to take action, "The time is not yet opportune." To return to my story, 1934 was undoubtedly the most strenuous year I put in as a public servant. Here I was, as a second grade staff officer, struggling almost single-handed to keep abreast of the work devolving on the Operations side of the Directorate. McNaughton was a terrific worker, but that is a game at which more than one can play. I never left the office until he had gone for the night. All that year I tried to reserve my mornings, when one is fresh, for what I allowed myself to call "constructive work," that is to say, the preparation of memoranda, and the afternoons for the yards deep of routine files that kept raining down on me in spate unceasing. Later in the day, when the offices had disgorged their occupants in a mad five-o'clock rush and interruptions were no longer to be feared, I used to settle

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down to the revision of what I had written that morning. My leave that year was packed into one short week-end, and at that I was back in town on the Sunday evening. I had a young R.C.E. lieutenant, Elliot Rodger, to devil for me, and in this capacity he proved himself an angel. His right attitude of mind towards his work coupled with an enlightened intelligence assured me that he would go far in his profession, and in this he has fully justified my confidence. Together we kept on revising and polishing the scheme for the reorganization of the N.P.A.M. which was no little chore in itself. Of steadily increasing importance was "Defence Scheme No. 3," in other words, General McNaughton's comprehensive plan providing for the mobilization of the coastal garrisons, the allocation of troops for internal security and, so as to be prepared for any eventuality, the organization and mobilization of a field force; in its last revise the latter consisted of an army corps of two divisions with the necessary complement of ancillary units. While this force might conceivably be held for service at home there was no doubt in our minds that in the coming war with Germany the Government of the day would decide on its dispatch overseas. As the forms and scales of attack to which it was judged Canada might be exposed in the event of even a major war comprised only limited naval and air bombardment and minor raids against our defended ports, once the strengths of the coastal garrisons had been fixed they required little in the way of periodic amendment. The question of internal security loomed large in some minds but not in mine for in time of war patriotic feelings are aroused and I was confident that rather than attempting to impede the national war effort the public as a whole would rally in support of the government. I gave this section no more time than I could help. The composition of the Field Force, or the Mobile Force, or the Canadian Active Service Force which was the name finally hit upon on mobilization in 1939, was constantly in our minds. Military districts were required to nominate for it a number of units proportionate to their population, the overriding consideration being that each part of the country should be afforded equality of opportunity for service and sacrifice. So that heavy losses in battle should not bear too heavily on any one province, the order of battle of each division included units from every section of the country extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Scheme was subject to annual review.

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If I could not manage any leave in 1934, I was fortunate enough to be given a change of scene; in August, with a mere twenty-four hours' notice, I was pitchforked into the role of helping Mr. E. J. Lemaire, then Clerk of the Privy Council, in the task of looking after the Government's official guests to the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Jacques Cartier's arrival in Canada. The guests were, for the United Kingdom, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes and Mr. H . A. L. Fisher; for France, M. Flandin, the wellknown politician, and M. Charlety, the Rector of the University of Paris; and for the United States, Mr. Robins, the American Minister to Canada and Admiral Cluverius of the United States Navy. The first ceremony at Gaspe was the unveiling of a great cross which had been erected in commemoration of Cartier's first act on setting foot on Canadian soil. It was a beautiful day, and the view overlooking the harbour was magnificent. Sir Roger Keyes spoke for the United Kingdom. The American Minister scored a tremendous success by prefacing his speech with a few most felicitous sentences in French. After this ceremony we repaired to a nearby convent behind which an enormous marquee had been erected in which we were all to dine. As I was scurrying around to find out what the plans might be, for I had left Ottawa on such short notice that I was completely without brief, I was astounded to hear Mr. Bennett, the Prime Minister, a good Protestant and a teetotaller to boot, call out, "Here, Pope, where are those cocktails? Hurry them up." How and where to find a trayful of cocktails in a nunnery struck me as being quite an order, but I set off down the stairs where I imagined the kitchens must be. On my way I met a sweet little nun to whom I appealed. In the most matter-of-fact way this kind religious put me at my ease by saying that the matter was in hand. At that moment two or three young girls, becomingly attired in old-fashioned dress, appeared bearing huge trays of martinis, and all was well. Of course there were speeches without end. This time it was Mr. Fisher's tum to speak for the British side. He did so in French and delivered the most perfect gem of a speech it has ever been my good fortune to hear. I gave a copy to Barnard of L'Evenement who duly published it in his paper. It read, in part, as follows : ... D'abord permettez-moi d'exprimer au nom de la delegation de la Grande Bretagne sa vive reconnaissance pour les paroles de bienvenue si charmantes et si genereuses que nous venons d'entendre, et de remercier a la

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fois les Gaspesiens et Gaspesiennes qui ont tant fait pour ajouter au charme de notre fete de cet apres-midi. C'etait avec une emotion profonde que nous avons celebre cet apres-midi le quatrieme centenaire du jour natal d'une nation puissante formee par la cooperation de deux grandes races, de deux grandes civilisations creatrices et complementaires. La gloire de Jacques Cartier est un tresor partage entre le Canada, la France et la Grande Bretagne. C'est la possession commune de tout l'Empire Britannique, et j'ose meme ajouter, si Son Excellence le Ministre des Etats-Unis ne souleve pas d'objection, que si Cartier n'avait pas vecu et que, si par consequent le Canada n'existait pas, sa decouverte entrerait au premier plan clans le programme imposant du President Roosevelt, tellement est·il essentiel au bien-etre de la grande republique des Etats-Unis qu'elle ait a cote d'elle un Canada independant, florissant et hon voisin. Je ne suis pas qualifie, comme l'est si bien mon illustre ami et collegue, Sir Roger Keyes, pour juger Jacques Cartier comme navigateur, mais on ne peut pas lire le recit de ses trois voyages clans }'edition magistrale du docteur Biggar, erudit Anglo-Saxon qui a fait ses etudes a Paris et a Londres, sans subir I'attrait d'un caractere remarquable et attachant. Je me souviens d'un vers d'un poete grec "La mer purifie les maux de l'homme." Cette purification de la mer Cartier l'a subie, creur simple, courage indomptable, droiture absolue, loyaute parfaite envers son souverain, foi religieuse simple et sincere, un don d'observation de menus details qui parait etre tres exact, la plume claire, sobre sans parure, telles sont les appreciations que je derive de la lecture des recits du grand Malouin. Nous faisons bien, Messieurs, de rendre hommage a ce bienfaiteur de la race humaine qui a ecrit de si belles pages sur l'epopee des voyageurs fran~ais en Amerique, epopee qui clans son importance mondiale depasse l'histoire des Croisades. Votre Eminence [Cardinal Villeneuve], puisque vous etes a cote de moi, je vais vous faire une petite confession. Je suis ne clans une petite He coloniale, clans une colonie normande qui s'appelle la Grande Bretagne, car clans le temps passe les normands ont colonise cette He, et en toute franchise confessionelle, je dois vous avouer qu'ils nous ont conquis et qu'ils nous ont fait beaucoup de bien. Car les normands etaient des gens tres senses, tres prudents. Ils se disaient: Voila les Anglo-Saxons, un peuple rustre, lourd, mal organise. La biere, qui est leur boisson nationale, est detestable et beaucoup inferieure a notre hon cidre normand. Pourtant, ils peuvent avoir des merites : ils se sont bien battus a Hastings et ils ont montre une certaine tenacite. Qu'ils continuent a parler leur patois entre eux pourvu que nous ne soyons pas obliges de l'apprendre, qu'ils conservent leurs anciennes coutumes et leur ancien droit, tel qu'il a ete ecrit clans les codes anglosaxons et c'est ainsi, Messieurs, que les normands ont pu garder l'Angleterre et que l'Angleterre a pu supporter les normands. Miracle de justice et de tolerance, direz-vous. Mais non, Messieurs, clans la bonne politique, ii n'y a pas de miracle, ii n'y a que de la bonne morale et du hon sens.

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Ayons le creur simple, ayons le hon vouloir les uns envers les autres, cherchons les voies d'accord, elargissons les horizons de notre savoir et de nos sympathies. En arriere les rancunes, les suspicions, les etroitesses et les petitesses de vue; que le courage envers l'inconnu de Cartier soit pour nous un drapeau et une inspiration et ne doutez pas que la paix de Dieu sera avec nous et que quoique clans telle ou telle partie du monde, tel ou tel Etat soit menace par la violence, les deux grandes democraties anglosaxonnes et franc;aises qui feront l'avenir du Canada, resteront stables parmi l'ecroulement des choses. Barnard had asked me if I could not get word through to Mr. Bennett's ear to say a word or two in French whenever he spoke in la vieille Province. I hardly knew the Prime Minister, but when the tour reached Ottawa I was required to call on Sir George Perley, whom I had known all my life, to give him a report. I took advantage of the occasion to give him Barnard's message at which Sir George a little grumpily observed, "Well, that won't win any votes." "I don't know about that," I replied, "but I do know that it won't lose any." Several months later I was amused to read that in his next speech in Montreal, Mr. Bennett began with a few words in the mother tongue of the majority of his audience. As I have indicated, I left Ottawa on the shortest notice. Had I had an opportunity I should have brought along my second right hand in the form of Q.M.S. Larry McCooey, who in Ottawa was forever bearing me up lest I dash my foot against a stone. Our party had no less than 55 pieces of personal luggage and I knew enough, if not about tours, then about men, to realize that much depended on our guests finding their things in their suites ready for them when they arrived at their next stopping place. Not having McCooey with me, this was a job I had to take on myself. As the party several times motored from one city to another, I would assemble the luggage, see it safely on the train, get it to the hotel, and then having assembled the bell captain and his crew, and having tipped everyone in sight, get it safely delivered to the several suites of rooms. When I called on M. Charlety in Quebec in order to take charge of his things, he humorously produced a small wooden orange crate, in which was a stuffed baby seal. This had been presented to him by the good people of St. Pierre and Miquelon, where s.s. Champlain had put in on its passage through the Gulf. Just what he would ever do with it he did not quite know, but he felt he had to bring it back to France with him in deference to the wishes of the donors. I assured

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M. Charlety that I would care for it as I would the apple of my eye. Imagine my horror, then, when I arrived at the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal and found that I was surplus a lady's hat box and minus a stuffed seal. Carrying the unwanted hat box, I jumped into a taxi and hurried down to the baggage room at the Windsor Street station. Recognizing one of the baggagemen from my C.P.R. days, I more or less took charge of the place. We climbed over mountains of baggage in the search when suddenly I came across a distracted young bridegroom bewailing the fact that his wife's hat box was missing and that in its stead he had been given an old crate. I embraced him on the spot, a trade was made, and all was well. We said goodbye to our guests at Niagara Falls, N .Y., and on my parting with M. Charlety he gave me an exquisite example of Old World moderation and reserve. Our relations had been delightful all through, and I suppose I had been quite useful to him. Yet as I bade him hon voyage, he took my hand and very kindly said that he was taking his leave of me with feelings almost of friendship-"avec des sentiments presque amicaux." How different this was to our senseless habit of becoming as intimate in manner of speech to an acquaintance of barely five minutes as we are with members of our own families! M. Charlety was possessed of great charm. He invariably showed that delightful simplicity of manner and complete lack of affectation which are the marks of the superior man. His observations on men and things were to the point and without malice. One morning at Quebec as he presided over a historical symposium with remarkable skill and delicacy, he uttered the word simplicite, then correcting himself substituted the phrase la divine simplicite. Too many of us fail to realize the merit he thus extolled. Harry Crerar duly returned to N.D.H.Q. from the Imperial Defence College in January, 1935, and relieved me of direct responsibility for the work of the Operations Directorate. As second-incommand, however, I found myself quite as busy as ever. Indeed, I am not certain that in some ways the pressure was not even greater than it had been in 1934. Towards the end of that year a start had been made in the Department to produce a much-needed manual of Mobilization Instructions. Progress, however, had been disappointingly slow, and, although mobilization was clearly the responsibility of the Adjutant General's branch of the staff, I undertook the preparation of an entirely new draft. This I did in what spare moments I could

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find between Christmas, 1934, and Easter, 1935. The manuscript was reviewed in the Department for the remainder of that year and was duly sent to the printer in 1936. Late in the summer of 1935, General McNaughton gave me the welcome news that he had nominated me to attend the Imperial Defence College the following year. Once again I had yet to complete a full three years in any one appointment, and again there was a shift for my family of some 3,000 miles, but I was delighted, not least because of the wearisome pressure of work in Operations. If the Staff College had been of great value, and an interchange tour of duty at the War Office an inestimable privilege, I am at a loss for words to describe the good fortune of those who are selected to attend the Imperial Defence College. Here I was, already in my forty-seventh year, once more relieved of all duty, in the company of quite senior sailors, soldiers, airmen, and civil servants, enjoying the rare privilege of studying the strategy, as well as the wider aspects of defence, of the British Commonwealth and Empire. This was done by taking up a number of hypothetical wars that directed our minds to every continent and to every ocean. To assist us in the consideration of these problems we were addressed by members of the Government, ambassadors and Service attaches home on leave, the British chiefs of staff, senior civil servants, and not least, heads of big corporations many of whose i~terests were pretty well world-wide. In these studies I was much struck by the attention paid to the economic side of warfare, and by the remarkable knowledge possessed by British experts of the economies of our potential enemies. War, in our day, had considerably overrun the comparatively narrow province of the professional sailor, soldier, or airman. The Imperial Defence College being what it was we naturally staged an Imperial Conference, but not very successfully I fear. Early on in our course each student was required to produce a short memorandum reviewing the resolutions and principles agreed upon at previous Imperial Conferences, "defining their implications, and expressing views as to whether they are adequate or whether any additional principles appear necessary." I put in my usual paper, in general form not unlike the one I had written at the Staff College a decade previously, but brought up to date in the light of political developments and further thought on my part on this important and fascinating subject. As before, I argued that the British Common-

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wealth had developed in accordance with a natural law of evolution in that executive power had gradually passed from the parent nation to the younger communities overseas; that these younger communities, now fully autonomous, would themselves decide their degree of defensive preparation; that this degree of defensive preparation would be found to be directly proportional to the sense of insecurity of the local public, without whose support political action was impossible; that provision and co-ordination of effort would become possible by reason of an upsurge of public opinion in the event of grave emergency; that in these circumstances, the resolutions of previous conferences were adequate and no good purpose would be served by attempting to add to their number. This individual exercise was followed several months later by a mock Imperial Conference which, somewhat unimaginatively it seemed to me, was conducted more on the lines of a council of war than on those appropriate to an assembly of statesmen. All this seemed to be very unreal to one like myself who had always taken an active interest in the question. We were presented with four "principles" which, it was said, had emerged from the papers we had previously written. They were: (a) common responsibility for the security of Imperial communications; (b) individual responsibility for local defence; (c) common responsibility for mutual help in war; (d) coordination in matters of defence. The "Prime Minister of the United Kingdom" led off with a speech calculated to make our hair stand on end. He laid it down quite bluntly that the burden of defence on the United Kingdom was most inequitable; that defence expenditures in the Dominions were of the order of 5/- a head and that these should be increased to approximately 30/- as compared to an expenditure of 80/- in the United Kingdom; that in consequence they were allotting (sic) the cost of twenty cruisers and a considerable number of new R.A.F. squadrons to the Dominions, Canada's share to be five cruisers and twenty-five air squadrons, as well as responsibility for the defence of the West Indies, this responsibility being accompanied by political control of this part of the Empire. The discussion was continued the following day when we were asked if we really did assent to the principles flung at us by the Directing Staff. An Australian sailor contented himself by saying that they did not commend themselves to his judgment. South Africa was

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clearly in an unreceptive mood, and Victor Brodeur, R.C.N., my syndicate leader, "passed the buck" to me saying that he had brought along his leader of the opposition who might be willing to express some views. This laid the ball directly at my feet and, in the circumstances, I saw no good reason why I should shirk an unpleasant task. I prefaced my remarks by saying that I would express a personal opinion but it would be one which I believed would not be far out of line with those that would actually be maintained in real earnest by the Canadian delegation to the next conference. I then described Canada's historic position much as I have already indicated. Having thus stated my views, I was weak enough to take a bite at my good friends. I suggested that as military men were invariably intolerant of civilian intrusion in the domain of strategy, it seemed strange to me that Service officers who had spent the greater part of their lives calling down maledictions on the heads of the unfortunate politicians, could bring themselves to believe that they were possessed of a sure insight into political affairs. This matter of Imperial Defence, I urged, was first and foremost and entirely, political in nature. In consequence, I suggested that it might not be a bad idea to have both the Dominions and Foreign Offices to pass on the exercise as it had been set. I was confident on this point for a few days previously we had heard a masterly exposition of the intra-Imperial relationship from Malcolm Macdonald, then Secretary of State for the Dominions. With such backing I besought them in the words of Cromwell "think it possible you may be mistaken." In any event, I maintained, "peace-time co-ordination in matters of defence" lay far beyond the limits of practical politics. As I fully expected, my modest effort met with not the slightest success. Continuing, however, I said that I found no pleasure in destructive criticism and it was therefore with considerable satisfaction that I welcomed the British proposal that Canada should assume responsibility both for the defence and for the political control of the West Indies. To my mind the idea was a quite natural development and consequently there seemed to be no reason why it should not prove to be politically feasible. To begin with, both Canada and the Caribbean Islands lay in the same hemisphere. In addition, we had traded with each other on a complementary basis for generations, we sending them our fish and lumber and taking in return their sugar, molasses, rum and fruit. Indeed, I remembered that even prior to Confederation,

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my grandfather, W. H. Pope, had been a member of a Prince Edward Island trade mission to the West Indies and Brazil. I accordingly ventured to suggest that it would be entirely appropriate to bring such an idea to the attention of the Canadian delegation to the next Imperial Conference. To my regret little or no progress has been made in this direction these last twenty years. The idea has been diffidently mooted on occasion in press articles, but it never seems to awaken much public enthusiasm. I suppose that having our hands full with the enormous task of further developing our own country, we can find no time to direct our thoughts farther afield. On the whole, this seems to be a pity for with a world steadily growing smaller it would seem to be opportune for Canadians to look beyond their own borders. Another interesting exercise was awaiting us at I.D.C. on our return from summer leave. Each student was handed a chit reading more or less this way: "For the last eight months students have been bemoaning the lack of a clear-cut and energetic British foreign policy. In consequence, students are invited to divide themselves into syndicates, to take a fortnight off, and to formulate a policy which in their opinion will better meet the situation presently confronting Great Britain and the Commonwealth." To my great satisfaction, I found myself in a syndicate of which Archibald Rowlands was also a member. Neither of us was the leader but that worried us not at all. Archie's first words to me on the subject were, "I am all out for a purely British policy and the greater part of Europe can go hang for all I care." "Then," I countered, "your reply to Litvinov's famous question is that the peace of Europe is divisible." Regarding this Archie was not too sure, and so we discussed the problem from every point of view in earnest search of a practical solution. For two long days we cudgelled our brains and finally we came to the conclusion that the only hope of preserving European, and consequently world, peace was the extension of the recently abrogated Locamo Pact so as to include the greater part of the Continent. In our view a rapprochement with Hitler's Germany was not a practical solution for it was clear that Hitler would offer peace in the West only in return for British indifference as to what might happen in Central and Eastern Europe, which German policy was then threatening. But we had already agreed that England's need was universal peace, for the reason that the peace of Europe was, in truth,

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indivisible. Mr. Eden cogently put the point for us a few weeks later at Bradford, on December 14, 1936: "The world has now become so small and every day with the march of science it becomes smaller, that a spark in some sphere comparatively remote from our own interests may become a conflagration sweeping a continent or a hemisphere." A new limited Locamo did not seem to have much to commend it. The old Pact, while useful for a while in that it had given Europe a sorely needed breathing spell, had failed to prevent Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland which an unprepared British public opinion could not be prevailed to look upon as a case of aggression. Since then the Germany of Hitler had become a great military power with ambitions threatening the peace of Central Europe, and we were in entire accord that a bonfire once started was certain to spread. It seemed to us that a policy of limiting British interest to a few countries on the western shores of Europe would be attendant with too great risk. Our reasoning consequently led us ineluctably to an extended Locarno comprising France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, which Yugoslavia, Rumania, and Russia would also be invited to join. Each of these countries had a vital interest at stake, and should each enter such a pact there was reason to hope that the peace of Europe might be maintained for a generation to come and the world have time to recover its balance. That Hitler would insolently reject such an invitation we freely admitted, but if he did so the world would be able to draw its own conclusions and the remaining contracting parties might thereby be strengthened in their desire to adhere. If the W estem democracies were not to be borne under it was essential to make a show of superior force, the only language Hitler appeared to be able to understand. We saw, of course, that the policy we proposed was slightly ahead of British public opinion . We maintained, however, that it was the only policy holding out any hope of effectiveness. Rowlands and I induced our syndicate to put in their report along such lines. When, several weeks later, a member of the Directing Staff came to discuss it with us our paper was covered with red ink, but we stuck to our guns and the unfortunate instructor, with Rowlands on one side and myself on the other, was subjected to an hour and a half's barrage of argument, advocacy, and exhortation. I pray that the

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present Lord Portal will forgive me for saying that when he withdrew from our syndicate room he seemed quite shaken. A heavy piece of artillery that we brought to bear was that while our paper was under review, Mr. Winston Churchill, then out of office, had put forward a not dissimilar proposal in a letter to The Times. Another exercise bore some relation to Canada. This was a study of the Pacific, the setting of which was rather far-fetched as it pictured a war between the Commonwealth and Japan, the United States being neutral. For the object in view, however, it admirably served our purpose. In this scheme I found myself in a Japanese syndicate and having recently served in Esquimalt and knowing how utterly inadequate were our West Coast defences, I argued for a diversionary naval demonstration in Canadian waters. But I found that I had assigned myself a particularly difficult task for my fellow workers, quite properly, steadily kept their eyes on their principal objective, namely, the British Beet based on Singapore. I imagine that it was only for the sake of peace within the syndicate that they granted my wish, and we were the only syndicate to make what seemed from some points of view an unprofitable detachment of strength. My argument, however, was that a display of Japanese naval strength in the eastern Pacific might cause such an outcry that the Commonwealth, in reality Great Britain, would feel compelled, quite wrongly in the circumstances, to send an undue proportion of its naval forces to our West Coast; on balance this would give the Japanese a net advantage. I often thought back to this when during the war many uninformed persons, taking counsel of their fears, tried to frighten us with weird tales of what the Japanese were likely to do to British Columbia. The coming war against Germany was reserved to the last and I doubt if I have ever enjoyed a military exercise more than this one since to a man we felt war to be not only inevitable but near. At the Staff College we had taken it that the war with Germany would probably be resumed in 1938, for the reason that at that time the pool of French military manpower would be at its lowest level. At the Imperial Defence College in 1936 we saw no reason to revise this estimate. It will be recalled that 1938 was the year of Munich. For this exercise I found myself in an Anglo-French syndicate and promptly appointed myself Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. I threw myself into my task with all the intensity of which I was

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capable. In a matter of weeks I not only thought as a Frenchman but in addition, I reached a point where actually I had brought myself to believe I was a Frenchman. On mobilization, or within several weeks of mobilization I had, as I recall, some 55 divisions to dispose of and for the entire period of the exercise I cudgelled my brains about their most effective disposition. In the event, I placed a maximum of 4 divisions on the French Riviera to guard against any incursion on Mussolini's part. Of the remaining 51 divisions I placed the barest minimum to hold the Maginot Line and to guard the comparatively undefended Franco-Belgian frontier, so as to retain in hand the greatest possible mass of manoeuvre. I well remembered von Moltke's dictum that while in military appreciations it was customary to allow the enemy three possible courses of action, in actual practice he invariably adopted a fourth . As my plans for the disposition of my forces were taking shape I ventured to outline them to Colonel Cuny, whom I had known at the Staff College and who at the time was serving as assistant French military attache in London. Cuny discreetly observed that I was not far off the official French plan. I then gained my syndicate's concurrence with my proposed dispositions. This done, we crossed the Channel to London (in reality we merely crossed the hall at the Defence College to another syndicate room) to have staff talks with our collegues anglais. When I had finished outlining my plan, I was by no means surprised to learn from my English counterpart that so great was their fear of a German bombardment of London on the outbreak of war, they felt obliged to retain their regular army in England to maintain civil order and to prevent a disastrous dislocation of the country's economy. To this proposal I was unable to assent. The French army, I argued, was ten times greater than the British and would be based on the Paris-Rouen area. Surely this base from which the French divisions on the frontiers were being maintained would prove a more attractive target to the Germans than would London. As it was I proposed to entrust the defence of this critical base of supply to my Territorial troops, composed of soldiers over 40 years of age not included in the field divisions; could not the British see to the security of London with their Territorial troops? My British friends were immovable. I then pleaded for one token division to range itself alongside my forward divisions. At this the British

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commander remarked that such a small formation could not possibly influence the opening battle and he inquired why I was so insistent on this point. My reply was that of Foch years before. A British division would thus be placed in the very forefront of the battle and it would have to incur casualties from the outset of hostilities since this was of paramount importance in stirring up British public opinion. In addition, the presence of the khaki uniform in France was essential to show that the two countries were making common cause; this was imperative if French morale was to be maintained. But I could make no headway. Rather did my British friends pat me on the back, and because of my presumed superiority of force to begin with, earnestly counsel me to launch an immediate offensive that in their view might enable me to carry the line of the Rhine in the first weeks of the war. I answered that my armies would make no attack against the Germans until the British were in a position to assume their proportionate share of the burden. The British side was still not to be moved. I then took a deep breath and fired my last shot. If the situation with regard to British participation in the war was such as had been described, it was incumbent on me to think again. As I saw it, the French and the Germans had been making war against each other for a thousand years and more. Fortune, on the whole, had been impartial. On some occasions she had favoured the enemy; on others she had looked favourably on French arms. In 1918, we with our allies had won but to France the cost had been great. As I appreciated the problem today I was conscious of the fact that my country was planning to put forward the last ounce of her strength but to the best of my military judgment this was not enough to stave off complete defeat. Consequently, if our British friends could not give us a firm commitment fully to participate in the field from the very outset, my course was clear. It was to re-cross the Channel and to recommend to my Government that they make their peace with Hitler before the event, leaving the British to take him on single-handed, for it was their place in the world that he coveted, not that of France. The effect was electrical, so much so that I could hardly keep from laughing out loud. The lads on the other side of the table swung round in their tracks and promised me no less than twenty divisions within the first year of the war. My last question was, "Then, to make use of your English idiom, you will be in this war with both feet?" and

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on receiving a firm assurance to this effect, I promptly adjourned sine die and post haste re-crossed the Channel, or in other words, regained my own syndicate room. I have often thought back to this experience. I have often wondered, too, how old Clemenceau would have conducted himself in 1936 in the face of the British Government's steadfast refusal to undertake a commitment of any kind, and this at a time when the onrush of war was as certain as tomorrow's sunrise. That I was only play acting I well knew but, as I have previously observed, play acting is not always far removed from real life. Indeed, it may be easier to reject a threat in a mock conference than in the real thing, for in the former circumstance, the crushing weight of responsibility is absent. In real life, of course, the tactic I employed on this occasion would have required great daring, much greater perhaps than it would be morally legitimate for a statesman responsible for the welfare of his people to employ. In addition, I have been struck in reading M. Andre Franroad have led me rather to agree with Harold Nicolson who once remarked, "The professional diplomatist acquires a habit of mind which can best be described as 'balanced scepticism'" (Spectator, Jan. 26, 1940).

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interested to observe again and again, for more than a week, a North American Lesser Yellowlegs that had somehow strayed across the Atlantic. I was greatly taken by the Basques of Guipuzcoa-the hearty Basques being the epithet usually used to describe this interesting race -who constitute a puzzle both to historians and to philologists although many theories have been put forward as to their origin. I have always liked what Richard Ford said a century ago in his handbook on Spain: "This comer of the land, like our Wales, is the home of the indigenes or aboriginal inhabitants, who have never been expelled or subdued: thus the character of an unadulterated primitive race, an ethnological fossil, remains, strongly marked in language and nationality." My wife and I once lunched at a wayside inn on the coast road midway between Bilbao and San Sebastian. At the adjoining table were three Basque countrymen partaking of a gargantuan meal and talking all the while. Neither of us was able to distinguish even one syllable of their speech. These highlanders, indeed one might call them mountaineers, are fiercely individualistic, stubborn, and brave. They are good farmers and provide Spain with her best sailors. It always amused me to see them robustly squirting their good red wine down their throats from their goat-skin gourds. Their throats, by the way, were honest and "hearty" and their splendid singing of simple plain chant on Sundays was worth going far to hear. The Basques are much given to pelota, a game resembling fives or handball. Each community has its court and every holiday there are matches between professionals. The game is strenuous and the players, it is said, die young. The action is exciting and the betting among the spectators is quite as fast and furious as the contest itself. At Zarauz each year there is a boat race between crews representing the neighbouring fishing villages. It is a gruelling contest which is rowed from a point near the shore to a line of buoys set some distance out to sea, and return. Again the betting is heavy and I heard that several years previously, when the favourite crew was unexpectedly beaten, its supporters were obliged to sell even their mattresses to pay their debts, which they did. At the finish of a race I saw during my first summer, the winning boat was capsized by the heavy swell rolling down from the north and all eight exhausted oarsmen and the cox were pitched into the sea. None of the spectators was the least bit moved. The umpire's motor-driven fishing vessel drifted leisurely towards the

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upturned boat which the crew were laboriously righting and everywhere there seemed to be a spirit of confidence that the lads were quite able to fend for themselves. Each year July 18, the anniversary of General Franco's uprising in 1936, marks the end of the Madrid season. It is a national holiday and there is always a big reception at La Granja, a summer palace standing on the northwestern slopes of the Guadarama mountains some forty miles or so from Madrid. The palace gardens are among the finest in Spain. They are typically French, and, such is the beauty of their setting, they are possibly more impressive than those one sees at Versailles. They are lavishly provided with magnificent fountains that throw streams of water high into the air, and also a many-terraced cascade, the falling sheets of which, re8ecting the glow of the sunset, glitter like molten silver and gold. At La Granja we were on each of these occasions duly received by the Caudillo, and then the company would proceed to the gardens where tables had been laid for the many hundreds of guests. Dinner was served in this setting by the staff of the Madrid Ritz, dressed in eighteenth-century livery. After dinner we would be treated to a concert. The stage was a raised terrace, with wings and backdrop provided by fully grown and well-clipped hedges. Then followed a full programme of singing and dancing. By the conventional Spanish dancing of a couple expressing the emotions of love, hate, envy, and jealousy, I fear I remain unmoved. For this my ignorance of the technique involved must bear the blame. But to the folk dancing to which we were treated each summer at La Granja, and elsewhere as well, my reaction was otherwise. I have the Jota in mind, danced by six or eight couples. On these occasions the perfection of their training, the skill and exquisite grace of the dancers, the kaleidoscopic effect of the swirling multi-coloured dresses, the etherial purity of movement together with the tunefulness of the music, charmed me beyond measure. And as the tempo of the dance, which at the beginning had been lively, became slower and the dancers finally assumed a fixed pose, I used to find myself transfixed in sheer delight. About the middle of September it was time to return from Zarauz to Madrid and to begin once more the never-ending round of writing reports and of attending social functions. In the course of one's daily life en poste abroad humorous incidents are now and then experienced which give life to the repetition of social

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duties. We once had the pleasure of entertaining a young Canadian who clearly was indulging himself in his first visit to Europe. He was a good lad, but brash and as green as green could be. As a consequence, much of the scene before his eyes was entirely new and sometimes a little puzzling to hoot. While it is not our habit at home, we are all familiar enough with the European manner of kissing a married lady's hand, or rather, of raising the lady's hand to the proximity of the lips. At a reception to which this young fellow had been invited, he saw this graceful action being carried out all about him. Actuated no doubt by the sound admonition "In Rome do as the Romans do" the lad laid about him with the gusto of a hearty sailor enjoying a spell of shore leave, and at one moment I saw him fervently kissing a young girl's hand with a smack that could be heard across the room. I found this incident quite a test of my power of self-control. Sometimes the test was really severe. Once upon a time a Canadian paid a visit to Madrid. He had been taken in hand by the Spanish authorities and had been given a really grand tour of the tourist show place, Toledo. He had been received by the town dignitaries and had been shown over the ruins of the famous Alcazar by the army officer who had directed its defence in the early days of the Civil War. The next day when speaking of this visit to an important Spaniard he repeatedly referred to the Alcazar as Alcatraz. Later, the interpreter for the occasion told me that he had not noticed the slip, but then Spanish courtesy is unsurpassed. But if in these paragraphs I have taken the liberty of having a little fun at the expense of several Canadians, the fact is that visitors from home were always welcome at any post with which I have been associated. While our principal obligation was, as effectively as we might, to represent Canada to the host country, lying not far behind this was the charge upon us to protect the interests of Canadian citizens living in, or visiting, the country to which we were accredited. Instances of distress occasionally came to our notice and within the limits imposed on us by government policy we rendered assistance as far as we could. Quite recently, I was gratified to learn that our posts abroad are now being authorized to be more generous and flexible in granting aid than we were in my time. For my part I was always glad to receive the Canadian visitor who dropped in merely to say "Hello." It is remarkable how difficult it is when one is abroad to keep in close enough touch with things at home.

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The atmosphere in which one is then living is entirely different from that prevailing in Ottawa, or elsewhere in Canada; our minds are concentrated on studying conditions in Norway, Belgium, or Spain as the case may be, and this, of necessity, must be somewhat at the expense of our continuing familiarity with matters Canadian. Visitors in this category were like a breath from home and I made a point of seeing everyone who cared to pay me a visit. When my engagement pad permitted, and it was usually well filled, I would very often invite the visitor to a meal at the Embassy although unfortunately this was not invariably possible to arrange. For as I saw it, I was serving the Government of Canada and consequently the Canadian people. It was their taxes that were affording me my living and so in the last analysis I was serving them, and I did what I could to make them welcome. At the posts at which I served visitors were never a problem but I realize that in some of the bigger capitals it is out of the question for the head of post to see everyone who calls for when all has been said and done he has many other duties to attend to. My out-of-the-ordinary experiences, however, were not always such as to amuse or to encourage feelings of pride. Some time in 1954, a Miss Freda Moore, a devoted worker on behalf of the British Benevolent Fund in Madrid, wrote to me regarding an old man who was completely destitute. George Papas was a Greek national but he had fought with Canadians, for Canada, in the Old War. He had suffered maltreatment during the course of his life and now in addition to being broken down in health, he had become totally blind. Some time previously, he had been turned out of his lodgings and when standing on a street corner with a little bundle containing all his belongings in his hand, with nowhere to go, he had been taken in by some people whose circumstances were hardly more favourable than his own. On hearing from Miss Moore I immediately sent her a contribution towards the unfortunate man's upkeep. I also obtained a compassionate grant through the kindness of Colonel A. Chambers, of the Department of Veterans Affairs, who was then serving in London. In the course of my correspondence with Colonel Chambers I gathered that our War Veterans Allowances, which had been designed to relieve distress in cases such as this, were not paid to veterans living elsewhere than in Canada. When this money ran out I wrote Ottawa expressing my astonishment that our regulations contained no provisions that would enable the authorities concerned to render modest but yet

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essential aid in deserving cases, even if the unfortunate men did not live within the borders of Canada. Indeed, as I wrote my temperature noticeably rose and I undertook then and there to assume responsibility for poor Papas so long as I served in Spain. As far as Ottawa was concerned I drew a complete blank. This incident led me to wonder what there can be in our North American climate that induces us to be so rigid in the drafting of our laws and regulations. It is patently beyond the wit of parliamentary counsel to provide for every instance that may arise, especially when the subject is one relating to human affairs. Surely it is but wise to grant discretionary powers to our ministers of the Crown, and to our senior public servants, all of whom are responsible men of experience and who can be depended on to do the right thing at the right time. But apparently our hard-faced Treasury and other officials prefer rigidity of rule and shun the assumption of discretionary power. Whatever else this tendency may be, it is not an indication of maturity of mind. Nor, at such times, does it incline a Canadian representative abroad to boast "Civis Canadiensis sum." It was therefore with a heavy heart that a fortnight later I found myself drafting the following short report. "Time has a way of solving our problems and of assuaging sorrow. George Papas died last night." I immediately drove down to the Provincial Hospital to pay my respects to the dead. The following day Miss Moore wrote me, DEAR GENERAL POPE,

With reference to the farewell you took this morning of one who fought for Canada in the First World War, I want to tell you that the Military Salute of General Pope, Canadian Ambassador, to an old soldier, caused a deep impression on those present. They realized that this was an honour that, in his wildest dreams, George Papas could never have imagined would one day be his. It was Mike Pearson's habit in those days to visit Paris each autumn, and he would usually convoke the Canadian heads of mission in western Europe to a two-day conference. These jaunts to Paris were always enjoyable. But they were also of value for when one is abroad, it is, as I have said, a never-ending struggle to keep from losing touch with the feel of things in one's native country. The 1954 meeting I was, however, destined to miss for I received instructions to proceed instead to Egypt there to represent Canada at the unveiling of the Alarnein war memorial. I spent only some fifty hours in Egypt and I

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saw so much that all the while I found myself humming the old song, "Follow the man from Cooks" that had been a feature of The Belle of New York, a comic opera popular when I was a boy. My plane was delayed and instead of arriving in Cairo on the evening of October 22, we did not land until early the following morning. This was fortunate in a way for we crossed the coast in the early dawn and, Hying at a low altitude, I had a magnificent view of the famous Delta. Mr. Dale, our Trade Commissioner, met me at the unearthly hour of 6 A.M .. and an Egyptian Protocol officer saw me through the Customs and Immigration as if I was visiting royalty. This caused me rightly to suspect that the Egyptian Ambassador in Madrid, with whom I always got on extremely well, had been good enough to ask his people to show me more than "the usual courtesies." Dale brought me to breakfast at his Hat somewhere on the left bank of the Nile, and then suggested a turn through the Museum. I gladly agreed and spent a most interesting hour marvelling at the Tut-ankhamen treasures. My host fetched me at the appointed time and brought me to the Citadel and its comparatively modern mosque. Then after a tour through a bazaar where for the first time I saw Eastern craftsmen inlaying silver on table tops, and so on, we went on to the Mena House for lunch, but not before I had been given the opportunity to have a fair look at the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid and to refuse repeated exhortations to go for a camel ride. After lunch we drove by the Desert Road to Alexandria where we put up at the Cecil Hotel. Here, there was a gathering of the guests for the morrow's ceremony but not having had any sleep for nearly forty hours, I sought my room. The next morning we drove to Alamein where we were greeted and briefed by the Imperial War Graves people. The ceremony was simple and seemed to consist of just what should be done on an occasion of this kind. Some hymns were sung and then Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery unveiled the Memorial. In his address he said that he approached his task with great humility, and he discharged it remarkably well. His address was short and his references most apposite. During the religious ceremonies I was much struck by a Muslim prayer that was said, or rather chanted, by an Imam. Naturally I understood not a word but the mode in which this prayer was sung seemed to me to be strangely reminiscent of a certain form of singing in church services with which I am not unfamiliar. The Memorial bears the names of some eighty or so members of our Royal Canadian

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Air Force who gave their lives in battle and who lie in no known graves. Walking about this fine monument I was delighted to run into Tommy Burns who had Aown over from Israel for the ceremony. When all was over Dale and I returned to Alexandria and thence once more to Cairo by the Desert Road. This was my first visit to the Near East and my first view of Africa. In the space of a few hours I had been able to see some of the famous sights of Cairo. The desert gripped me for it seemed to me that lonely and wellnigh uninhabited region was possessed, almost, of a soul. I retain vivid memories of those desolate stretches of sand and of the pitiless sun that burns down fiercely on them; of, too, Arab children by the roadside offering us ripe figs and freshly snared quail, of a sudden sand storm so blinding that we were forced to bring our car to a halt, followed by a heavy downfall of rain over a land so parched that it was utterly devoid of vegetation. And, lastly, I retain a picture, which will never fade, of a string of camels a mile or so away but standing out clearly against the afterglow of a sun that had already set, who, with a strange ungainly dignity, were homeward plodding their weary way. More or less coincident with my arrival in Spain the question of Gibraltar was raised actively by the Spanish authorities. The undergraduates at Madrid University staged several demonstrations before the British Embassy. "Macaulay," supposed by some to be the Chief of State himself, published a series of articles in a Madrid newspaper pressing for the return of the famous "Rock" to Spanish sovereignty. It is not my purpose to undertake a review of this troublesome question for after all Canada was not directly concerned. Within a few weeks after our arrival Martin Artajo, the Foreign Minister, gave a dinner in our honour during the course of which he fully expounded the Spanish side of the controversy. I contented myself on this occasion with observing that the possession of Gibraltar was something that stood high in British public opinion and that if action were ever taken to meet even some part of the Spanish claims, and this I did not think to be probable, then the ground would have to be most carefully prepared. This would take time. I added that from what I could judge pressure on the United Kingdom in the matter would be certain to prove adverse to Spanish aims. For my part, it seemed to me that the idea of a British crown colony on the western shores of Europe simply did not make good sense. And

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as a matter of principle, I am still of this opinion. There happens, however, to be more than one principle involved. I suppose I must have confidentially expressed such a view to my friends of the British Embassy. Now there is at least some compensation in representing a country such as Canada which, pace some of our wishful thinkers, is not a Great Power and as a consequence is clearly unable to exert much influence in world affairs. This is that it is not essential for him to hedge when some colleague asks him if he does not agree that it is a very fine day. On the other hand, mere prudence suggests that he should carefully choose the company before which he allows himself to express his views on the topics of the hour. Perhaps in this respect I have been fortunate in the course of my life. It is just possible that because of the views I had expressed on the question of Gibraltar, in 1954, General Sir Gordon MacMillan, the Governor and C.-in-C. Gibraltar, invited my wife and me to pay him a short visit. MacMillan was an old acquaintance. We had served together at the War Office in the early thirties, and just before the war he had done a tour as an interchange officer in Canada when I had met him on a number of occasions. We were received with true Scottish hospitality and were shown the sights by the Governor himself. I was most interested in all that I saw. But of far greater interest to me was a long talk I had with MacMillan on the general subject of Gibraltar, followed by a meeting he had arranged for me with three members of his Executive Council. Each of these men were of quite different origin. One was of English extraction, being a third generation Gibraltarian. The second told me that his forebears had originally come from Genoa. The third began by telling me that he was a Jew. He said he believed his people had left Spain some four centuries and more ago in the time of the Catholic monarchs. They had spent some two hundred years as exiles in North Africa and towards the end of the eighteenth century they had come to Gibraltar where they had lived ever since. All three men spoke the same identical piece. It was to the effect that they were Gibraltarians and British. It was of course true that they were largely of mixed Mediterranean blood, that intermarriage with Spaniards had been common over the generations, that they all spoke Spanish as their second tongue, that they liked Spain, its people and Spanish culture. But they were of another special race, namely, Gibraltarian; they were passionately attached to their British connec-

442

Soldiers and Politicians

tion under which they had lived from father to son, and enjoyed freedom; their situation was not perfect but perfection was not of this world, so that, though there were differences between Whitehall and Gibraltar which they would not attempt to conceal, these would be reconciled as time went on. British subjects and Gibraltarians they were and Gibraltarians and British subjects they were determined to remain. This was enough for me. A fair number of catch phrases have been coined over the last half-century but none, I believe, has had the same forceful appeal to the common man's sense of justice as "self-determination." Long ago, when political consciousness was little heard of, if indeed it existed, peoples and provinces frequently had their allegiances changed for them by princely marriages. And the peoples of those days that are gone do not seem to have minded whether they were ruled over (I have Belgium in mind) by a Spaniard or an Austrian. But all this has changed. The idea of a forceful transfer of a people from one sovereignty to another, against their expressed will, is repugnant to world opinion and, I am sure, to natural justice. This being so, I instantly concluded that the question of Gibraltar must be considered closed until, if ever, the Gibraltarians undergo a change of mind. Meanwhile, time was slipping by and more and more I found myself thinking in terms of the ancient Romans' Otium cum dignitate that lay ahead of me. There were moments, however, when remembering our well-nigh servantless economy at home, it would occur to me that there might be precious little otium and still less dignitate about my life in retirement. After some correspondence with the Department, it was agreed that I should relinquish my appointment in March, 1956, and my wife and I made our plans accordingly. Shortly before this the thought occurred to me that it would be but courteous on my part to seek an audience of the Caudillo before my departure. Hitherto this had not been usual, and I remember that when I first met Jock Balfour, who had gone out of his way to be helpful to me on my arrival in Madrid, he had advised me to make the most of my talk with Franco when I presented my letter of credence, for I should never have another. However my request was favourably received. On arriving at El Pardo, a few days before leaving Madrid, I began with a little speech in Spanish in which I expressed my respects to

Spain

443

the Chief of State, adding how much I had enjoyed my two years and more in Spain. Thereafter I spoke in French which Franco understands but which for obvious reasons he does not use on formal occasions. An interpreter was present, but his services were only occasionally required for by that time I had begun to make some progress in my study of Castillano. In reply, Franco spoke very kindly of the relations between our two countries and he hoped that our exchange of ideas, and goods, would continue to grow. The conversation then became general. The winter of 1955-56 had been of unprecedented severity in Spain and had caused havoc to the citrus crop which was the country's most important earner of foreign exchange. This he seemed to take in a most philosophic manner. He then spoke of hydraulic development both for the generation of electric power and for irrigation. He said that within six years all new work under this head would have been brought to completion. By that time all the rivers in Spain would have been harnessed. Many of them were too small to produce electricity but the water could be stored to serve the needs of irrigation. When the plan had been completed a further million hectares of land would have been brought under irrigation. This is a considerable area and it should prove a valuable outlet for the surplus agricultural population. We, of course, also had a "go" on salmon fishing and we compared notes of our experiences on the Narcea, in Asturias, where I had followed him each spring. I did not fail to tell him how strange it seemed to a northerner to beach a salmon in the shade of a fig tree or an orange tree and to cast one's Hy from under the broken arch of a Roman bridge. As I rose to take my leave, I again spoke a little formal piece in Spanish, and then, for during my stay in Spain I had found myself growing more and more sympathetic towards the Generalissimo who was striving against great difficulties to improve the lot of his fellow countrymen, I moved nearer to him and in all sincerity I wished him good fortune, mucha buena suerte. Franco seemed touched by my action. He smiled and stretching forth his two hands he grasped my arms in a friendly gesture. Today, in writing as I have, I recall that in my letter of credence our gracious young Queen had addressed the Chief of the Spanish State as "My good Friend," and that courtesy is the fundamental law of diplomatic intercourse. Of course, before quitting Spain I was unable to resist the tempta-

444

Soldiers and Politicians

tion to deliver myself of a long valedictory dispatch to the Department which I ended as follows: Such brie8y, but at too great length for which my lack of knowledge is largely to blame, are the thoughts I carry away with me as I bid this fascinating land farewell. That I have failed to do justice to my subject I am only too aware, but it would take a lifetime to get to know this country really well. And lastly, having now come to the end of my course, be it believed that I am unbuckling the harness in a contented frame of mind. I have had a good run, better by far than I could have expected a decade or so ago, and the thought that is uppermost in my mind today is what a privilege it has been to serve my country during the greater part of my life, and how much my country has done for me. It is therefore with a feeling of gratitude that, reverting to the form of a day that has now past but with which I was long familiar, I inscribe myself as having the honour to be, Sm,

Your obedient servant, MAURICE POPE.

Then followed the customary round of farewell parties and on March 13, my wife and I, and two dogs, set out for the last time by the familiar north road via Burgos and Vitoria to San Sebastian. Thence we travelled by way of Carcassonne, Aix-en-Provence ( with a detour to see the famous Oamingoes of the Camargue), Nice, and Genoa where we took ship on March 20. The trip through the Mediterranean was unpleasant being marked by dull skies and stiff headwinds. Two days later, we made the usual stop at Gibraltar where I found awaiting me a particularly friendly telegram from lvo Mallet wishing us hon voyage on behalf of himself and our good friends of the British Embassy, another of appreciation from the Prime Minister, and a letter from Mike Pearson of which I append a copy: DEAR GENERAL POPE:

I have read with great interest your valedictory despatch and this analysis of your experience will be of inestimable value to your successor and to the Department in the conduct of our relations with Spain. Because of its profundity, discernment and sensitivity, it is indeed a fitting valedictory for an assignment well done.

Spain

445

If, as you suggested in your penultimate paragraph, . you "have had a good run," I am sure I can say on behalf of the Canadian Government that it has had an even better run from the unfailingly faithful and responsible service of which you can be justly proud. I look forward very much to seeing you on your return to Canada and to the opportunity of expressing personally my gratitude and that of the Government of Canada for the long and devoted service you have given your country. In addition to the wide distribution I am giving your report in Ottawa, I am also circulating it to all our missions abroad. Yours sincerely,

L. B.

PEARSON.

My heart warmed within me as I read my old friend's generous words. Then turning our backs on the Pillars of Hercules, as impressive to the traveller today as they were to the Phoenician navigators of olden times, the good but ill-fated s.s. Andrea Doria set out on her long voyage in the direction of the setting sun.

Index

AACHEN, 374, 385 Abbeville, 32 Acheson, Dean, 265, 397 Adams, F. D. (Dean), 12 Adegem: ceremony of remembrance, 396-7 Aden, 80 Adenauer, Konrad, 356, 367-8, 374; Berlin speech (1950), 380-1 Admiralty, "an old firm," 74 Adriatic, 189 Afghanistan, 128 Africa, North: British-American descent on, 152, 175, 189,202,221,229 Alamein, 438-40; War Memorial, 43940 Alanbrooke, Viscount, see Brooke, Gen. Sir Alan Alaska: visit to, 218-20; Highway, 218-19 Albert (France), 32 Albert, King of the Belgians, 408 Alberta, 18 Alcatraz, 436 Aleutian Islands, 214-18, 219, 227 Alexander, Field-Marshal Sir H. (Earl), 56 Alexandria (Egypt), 439 Allchin, Sir G. C., 398 Alport, Capt. F., 45 Allied Control Council, Berlin (Authority), 294, 295, 303, 322, 328, 367; presentation to, 295-6; organization, 299-300; limitation of German steel industry, 328; preparation for Council of Foreign Ministers, Moscow, 330-1; currency reform, 335; Sokolovsky disrupts, 336; Canada's position, 339-40 Allied Co-ordinating Committee, 300, 305, 322

Allied High Commission to W estem Germany, 367-71; presentation of letters of credence to, 373; clash with German Government, 379-80 Allied Military Missions, Berlin, see Military Missions, Allied, Berlin Allied Military Security Board, Germany, 368 Allied occupation of Germany, see Germany Alps, 293 Altenau, 321 Ambassadors, function of, 432-3 Amiens, 32; Cathedral, 51; Hotel du Rhin, 51 Ammer river, 337 Anchorage, 2 I 8 Anderson, Maj.-Gen. W. A. B. (Bill), 154 Anderson, Brig. W. B., 30 Andrea Doria, s.s., 445 Angell, J. W., 286, 290 Antwerp, 55, 374, 402 Argyle House (London), 42 Armistice (1918), 42-4 Armstrong (B.C.), 66 Armstrong, Maj.-Gen. B. F. (Billy), 342 Army, British, 41, 53, 61; British Expeditionary Force (1914), 33; 5th Army, 36, 59; of the Rhine, 403 Army, Canadian: 1st Canadian Division (1914), 24; 4th Field Company, C.E., 24, 48; 2nd Divisional Engineers, 25; Infantry Brigades (CEF, 1914-18)5th, 33-4, 11th, 34, 36, 12th, 34; Infantry Battalions (CEF, 1914-18)54th, 34, 36, 75th, 34, 38, 102nd, 34-5; Canadian Corps (1914-18), 36,39; 4th Canadian Division (191718), 37, 59; 4th Brigade, C.E., 38, 46, 48; organized on British model, 53,

448

Index

54; Non-Permanent Active Militia, 53, reorganization, 82-3, 93, 123, French Canadians and, 83-9; Dieppe raid, 65, 313; strength of Permanent Force prior to 1939, 89; Canadian Active Service Force, 93, creation of (1939), 160; dispatch of 1st Division (1939), 1423, 149, 150; special units, 142; in England, 149-57; First Canadian Corps (1940)-new composition for, 154-5, formation of, 155-8; 48th Highlanders (CASF), 160; Reserve Army-role of, 160-1, lack of ri8es, 179-80; recruiting (1941), 168-70; medical categories, l 70-1 ; shortage of Frenchspeaking officers, 171-2; Les Fusiliers du St. Laurent, 172; dispatch to HongKong, l 73-4; training deficiencies, 175-6; employment in cross-channel project, 195-7; active employment, 210-12; employment in the Aleutians, 214-17; 1st Canadian Army in Normandy, 238; Canadian Army of Occupation Force, 297 Army, Reserve, see under Army, Canadian Army, U .S.: relations with civil departments, 193-5, 365 Army Council, British, 77-8; instructions, 170 Arnold, Gen. Henry H., 185 Arnold-Portal-Towers Memorandum of Agreement (Air), 197-9 Ashe, Oscar, 43 Associated Pacific Powers, 192, 205 Astrid, Queen of the Belgians, 408 Atomic bomb, 276 Attu, 214 Atwater Park, 20 Aurand, Brig.-Gen. Henry S., 201 Australasia, 187 Australia, 193, 198 Austria, 102 Autobahn, 292, 337, 340 ,347, 365 Azores, 51

BAcH, Herr, 343 Baden-Baden, 351 Bad Harzburg, 345 Bailleu!, 30 Baldwin, Stanley, 106, II 7, 180 Balfour, Lord, 128 Balfour, Sir John (Jock), 431, 433, 442

Balfour Declaration (1926), 109, ll4, 115 Baltic, 293 Bank of Montreal, 42 Barclay, Gregor, 24 Barnard, J., 70, 94, 96 Baseball, 20-1 Basques, 434-5 Battle of Britain, I 63, I 67 Baudouin, King of the Belgians, 392, 395, 406, 407, 4ll Basko vom Schloss Grunau, 378, 4ll Beamer, Col. W . G., 234 Beauchesne, Arthur, 246 Beaverhrae, s.s., 404 Beaverbrook, Lord, 79 Bech, Joseph, 397, 399 Bech, Madame, 399 Beckett, Lt.-Col. S. G., 34 Beechborough estate, 28 Belgium, 387-412; Belgian Congo, 269, 392-3; in political crisis, 387-95; political divisions, 390-2 Belgo-Canadian Military Convention, 404 Belfe Isle Strait, 179 Belleville, l 6 Benelux countries: meeting in London, 335, 337 Bennett, R. B., 94, 96 Bentinck, Rev. Sir Charles, 407 Berendsen, Sir Carl A., 274 Berlin, 48, 187, 277, 282, 291-365; beginning of Blockade, 336-40; casus belli, 337; power rationing, 341; Blockade, 341-64; British Army ration, 351 ; air-lift, 351, 355, 356; living conditions, 359-60; possibility of negotiation, 361-2; Blockade lifted, 364-5 Berlin Mission, see Military Missions, Allied, Berlin Berne, 376 Bevin, Ernest, 3 l 2 Bidault, Georges, 270, 285, 319 Biggar, Col. 0 . M., 162, 164 Bilbao, 434 Birkenhead, Lord, 128 Bissell, Maj.-Gen. Clayton, 166-7, 180 Bi-Zone of Germany, 302, 336, 340 Blair, A. G., 5 Blankenhorn, Herbert, 380-1, 384 Blaton, Emile, 401 Blitz (London), 149, 163 Bloom, Chester, 238 Blue grouse, 67

Index Boardman, W. F., 8 Bogart, Col. J. L., 52 Bois de Coulonge, 224 Bolero Operation, 210, 212 Bonham-Carter, Maj.-Gen., 75 Bonn, 295, 366-86; Bonn-Paris axis, 354; Frankfurt or Bonn, 367-8; establishment of civil missions, 371-2 Bordeaux, 405 Borden, Sir Robert L., 16, 278, 315; Canada in the Commonwealth, 71 Borinage, Belgian, 45 Botha, M. I., 407 Boulogne, 30 Bourlon Wood, 39 Bourne, Gen. Sir Geoffrey, 188 Bowell, Sir Mackenzie, 16 Bradford (England), 102 Bradley, Bill, 21 Bramble, Colonel, 284 Branov (Ukraine), 317 Brandt, Herr Willy, 343 Bratislava, 316 Brazil, 101 Breadner, Air Chief Marshal L. S., 355 Briand, Aristide, 344 Britannia (Ottawa), 9 British Army, see Army, British British Columbia: Japanese after Pearl Harbor, 176-7 British Control Commission, Berlin, 294; Wahnerheide, 370, 376 British Expeditionary Force, 1914, 33 British Joint Staff Mission, Washington, 184, 190, 233; composition, 185; Arnold-Portal-Towers Memorandum of Agreement (Air), 197-9 British North American colonies, 3 Brockville, 171 Brodeur, Rear Admiral Victor, 184, 197 Brogan, D. W., 428 Brooke, Gen. Sir Alan (Field-Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke), 55-6, 148, 189-90, 210, 211, 225, 226, 233, 241; as an ornithologist, 266 Brown, Ernest, 11 Brown, Mother, 44 Brown, R. P., 79 Brownjohn, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Nevil C. D., 347 Brussels, 45, 291, 376 Bryant, Sir Arthur, 186, 189-90 Buckingham Palace, 7 Buckner, Gen. S. B., 216 Budapest, 55

449

Bull, Fred, 431 Bull, Lieut., 30 Bully Grenay, 33 Burgos, 444 Burma, 187, 230 Burns, Lieut.-Gen. E. L. M. (Tommy), 135, 145, 440 Burns, General (U.S. Army), 201 Butler, R. M., 14 Byrnes, J. F., 75, 312, 319 428 Cabinet Defence Committee (Can.), 242, 264 Cabinet War Committee, see War Committee of the Cabinet Cadieux, Marcel, 410 Cairo, 411, 439-40; Cairo Cor,ference, 237 Calais, 30 Calgary, 241 Camargue, 444 Camberley: Staff College, 52, 54-63 Cambridge: Clare College, King's College, 35 Cameron, Brig. H. L., 217 Campbell, George A., 182 Campbell, Hugh, 239 Campine, 403, 404 Canadian Army, see Army, Canadian Canadian Battlefields Memorial Commission, 50 Canadian Cabinet War Committee, see War Committee of the Cabinet Canadian Institute of International Affairs: conference on defence, Hamilton, 1937, 132-4 Canadian Joint Staff Committee, 127, 133 Canadian Joint Staff Mission, London, 262-3 Canadian Joint Staff Mission, Washington, 182-239; establishment, 197; meeting with B.J.S.M. re strength of air forces, 198-9; quarters, 203 Canadian Military Headquarters, London, 55, 145-58, 220-1, 262-3, 283; accommodation, 148; defence policy, 150; establishment of the Reinforcement Units, 150-1 Canadian Military Mission, Berlin, 277; organization as military unit, 283; head of, 367 Canadian National Defence College: CABALLERO, LARGO,

450

Index

vmts to Germany, 373; to Belgium, 409-10 Canadian Pacific Railway, 13, 18, 1920, 24, 48 Canadian War Book, see War Book, Canadian Canary Islands, 210 Candide, 343 Cano] project, 219 Carcassonne, 494 Carey, Lt.-Col. A. B., 36 Carleton County (Ontario), 24 Carlton Hotel (London), 43 Cartier, Jacques, celebration, 94-7 Carton de Wiart, Lt.-Gen. Sir Adrian, 175 Cartwright, Julia, 4 Cartwright, Sir Richard, 9 Casablanca Conference (1943), 207, 209, 210, 225 Castile, 412 Caughnawauga Indians, 18 Cayeux, Joseph, 387, 402 Cecilienhof (Potsdam), 334 Censorship, 140-3; regulations, 128, 135; cable, 135, 141; postal, 141; radio, 141; press, 141-2; Co-ordination Committee, 141-3 Central Ontario Railway, 15 Chamberlain, Sir Austen, 120, 128 Chamberlain, Neville, 129, 135 Chambers, Col. A., 437 Champlain, s.s., 96 Chaput, Roger, 388 Charlemagne, 321 Charles II, 146 Charlety, J., 94, 96 Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, 389, 393, 411 Charlottetown Conference (1864), 3 Chateau Beauregard, 405 Chateau Lafite, 45 Chatham, Earl of, 107 Chatham House (London), 150 Chaumont-Gistoux, 45, 50, 402, 406 Chester (Eng.), 146 Chevetogne, 401 Chief of the General Staff (Canadian), liaison letters, 129-30 Chiefs of Staff, British: views on Grand Strategy, 186-9 Chiefs of Staff, Canadian, 127; meeting with British C.O.S. (Quebec, 1943), 227 Chiefs of Staff, Combined: established

(Dec., 1941), 184-5; meetings, 1856, 189-91; meetings with heads of other missions, 192, 205, 225; and war against Japan, 243-4; British and U.S. views on propased zones of occupation, Germany, 244-5 Chiefs of Staff, United States: compasition, 185; views on Grand Strategy, 185-9; view of President as C.-in-C., 193-4; chary of imparting information, 255-6; Strategic Committee, 233 Chiefs of Staff Committee: secretary, 127; appointed member, 241 China, 230 Christian Democratic Union, 323 Chronicle-Telegraph (Quebec newspaper), 70 Chu Chin Chow, 43 Churchill, Sir Winston, 61, 103, 128, 142, 149, 185, 186, 189, 190, 221, 242, 381; Quebec Conference (1943), 222-5; visit to Premier of Quebec, 224-6 Citizen (Ottawa news£aper), 8 Clabon, Capt. A. W. (Tony), 294, 297, 313, 341, 382 Clark, James Beauchamp (Champ.), 18 Clark, Clifford, 129 Clauzel, Monsieur, 405 Claxton, Brooke, 255, 318 Clay, Gen. Lucius D., 234-6, 296, 313, 327, 349, 355; introduces currency reform in Germany, 335, 336; departure from Berlin, 365 Clay, Mrs. L. D., 313, 365 Clemenceau, Georges, 106 Clementis, V., 332-4 Cluverius, Admiral (U.S. Navy), 94 Coast defence: study of, 65 Coldwell, M. J., 269 Coleridge, Capt. R. D. C. (Lord), 200, 207, 209, 223, 226 Collective security, 268-9, 275 Collins, Major John, 49-50 Cologne, 295, 370, 385 Colonial Office, 188 Columbia University, 286 Committee of Imperial Defence, London, 127, 128, 226; essay, 108-22; defence documents, 126 Common law (England), 116 Commonwealth: defence forces, 62-3; views on, 61-3, 71 Commonwealth ambassadors: meetings in Brussels, 405

Index Commonwealth House, Berlin, 294 Commonwealth Military Missions, Berlin, 360-1 Communism, 301-2 Conference of Defence Associations (Canada), 82 Congo, 269, 392-3 Connaught, Duke of, 26 Conscription: in 1918, 41; crusade for (1941), 172; crisis (1944), 247-61 Consecon (Ont.), 16 Control Council, see Allied Control Council, Berlin Co-ordinating Committee, see Allied Coordinating Committee, Berlin Cordoba, 422 Coronation, see Elizabeth II, Queen Costello, Desmond P., 317, 318 Cote, Senator Louis, 169-70 Council of Foreign Ministers, Moscow, see Moscow Conference, 194 7 Courcellette, 33 Cousin, Valery, 401 Cox's Hotel (London), 42 Cramer, Maj.-Gen. Myron C., 206 Crerar, Gen. H. D. G., 74, 97, 126, 135, 146, 148, 151, 154, 155-7, 161, 170-1, 198; talk with Brooke, 211; assumes command of Army, 237-8 Crillon Hotel (Paris), 311 Cryolite mine, Greenland, 144 Cunliffe-Lister, Sir Philip, 127-8 Cunningham, Admiral Sir Andrew (Viscount), 185 Cuny, Colonel, 104 Currie, Gen. Sir Arthur, 36, 59 Currie, George, 179 Czechoslovakia, 102, 3 l 6- 17; Bratislava bridgehead, 316; visit to Prague, 484-6 D DAY, 231, 238 Dafoe, J. W ., 220, 256 Dakar, 244 Dale, M. R. M., 439 Dauginet (caterer), 406 Davis, T. C. (Torn), 376, 382 Dawson, Lieut. Louise, 241, 284, 294 Dawson, R. MacGregor, 26lfn, 277 Deane, Brig.-Gen. (U.S. Army), 204 Decarie Avenue Subway (Montreal), 19 Defence Associations, Conference of, see Conference of Defence Associations Defence committees, interdepartmental, 127, 130

451

Defence plans: scheme no. 3, 93, 123; forms and scales of attack, 93, 150, 161 ; unpreparedness in the thirties, 123; defence estimates increased, 1937, 124; Reserve Army, 160-1 ; Canada-U.S., 163, 166; plan no. 1, no. 2, 164fn Defence policy, lack of prior to 1937, 89-92 Defence regulations : 129, 139, 143, 205, 263; remarkable amendment to, 205-6 De Gaulle, General Charles, 58, 225, 279 Desy, Jean, 273 Deuxbarry, Miss, 4 l 5 Dewar, Maj.-Gen. D. E., 284 Dewing, Maj.-Gen. R. H ., 153, 183, 192 Dewitt, Lieut.-Gen. John L., 216 Dickebusch, 31 Dieppe, 65, 313 Dill, Field-Marshal Sir John, 56, 185, 189-91, 197,199,217,225,226,231, 237; appointed head of B.J.S.M., 190; attitude towards employment of Canadian Army, 2ll ; death, 252 Dominion Day receptions : Berlin, 310, 342; Brussels, 388 Dorchester Hotel (London), 283 Dore, Victor, 375, 397 Douglas, Marshal Sir Sholto (Lord), 309-10, 313 Dratvin, General (U.S.S.R.), 342 Dresden, 332 Driva river, 396 Drury, Brig. C. M., 204 Duff, Chief Justice Sir Lyman, 182 Dumbarton Oaks, 254, 266, 268, 272, 312 du Monceau de Bergendal, Count J. J., 50 du Monceau de Bergendal, Countess Simonne, see Pope, Simonne (Mrs. Maurice Pope) Dundonald, Lieut.-Gen. (Earl), 90 Dunkerque, 148, 154, 163, 167 Duvieusart, Monsieur (Belgium), 389 Dyde, Lt.-Col. H. A. (Sandy), 205-6 Dykes, Brig. V., 188-9, 198, 200, 202, 223 Dziuban, Col. Stanley W., 164fn 13 Eayrs, James, 26lfn, 433fn

EAU CLAIRE,

452

Index

Eden, Sir Anthony, 102, 156, 157, 212 Edmonton, 219, 220 Edward VIII, 106 Eggleston, Wilfrid, 141 Egypt, 186, 438-40 Eiffel, German, 143 Eisenhower, Brig.-Gen. Dwight D. (General of the Army), 187, 227, 231; Chief, War Plans Division, 183; appointed Generalissimo, 231, 397; attack on western Europe from British Isles, 183 Elbe river, 293; line of the, 301 Elections: Canadian (1908), 16; Canadian (1911), 18-19; British (1931), 81; Canadian (1945), 273-4 Elizabeth II, Queen: Coronation 405-9, 443 Embick, Lieut.-Gen. S. D., 162, 207, 272 Emergency Legislation Committee (War), 129 Eng_ineer Brigade, see under Army, Canadian Erhard, Ludwig, 376, 377-8, 384 Erich (butler), 382 Escaut Canal, 39 Esquimalt, 63-8, 177; coast defence, 65, 131 Ethiopia, 117 European Advisory Commission, 187, 301 European Coal and Steel Community, 409 European Defence Community, 409 Evatt, Dr. Herbert, 214, 274 L'Evenement (newsl'aper), 70, 94 Evill, Air Marshal (R.A.F.), 185 Explosives Act (Canada), 128 External Affairs, Dept. of 432; see also Pearson, L. B. FAIRBANKS (Alaska), 218 Falkenhorst, Nikolaus von, 314-15 Falkland Islands, 61 Farhen, I. G., Company, 294 Federal Republic of Germany, see Germany Fellowes, R.S.M. Bill, 25 Ferguson, Howard, 80 Fielding, W. S., 267 Finn, D'Arcy, 8 Fifth Army, see under Army, British First Canadian Army, Normandy, see under Army, Canadian

First Canadian Division (1914), see under Army, Canadian Fisher, H. A. L., 138, 139, 232 Fitzmaurice, Col., 67 Flag, Canadian, 223-4 Flandin, Monsieur, 94 Fleury, Monsieur, 6 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 51, 57, 105 Folkeston, 29 Ford, Richard, 172, 434 Foreign Ministers Conference (London, 1947), 334 Forms and Scales of Attack, see under Defence plans Foulkes, General Charles, 335 Fourth Canadian Division, see under Army, Canadian Fourth Engineer Brigade, see under Army, Canadian 48th Highlanders (C.A.S.C.), see under Army, Canadian Fowler, R. M., 182 Fox hunting, England, 28 Frameries, 45 France: exercise at Staff College, 1036; downfall (1940), 146--8; World War II policy, 147; policy towards Germany, 304-5; rapprochement with Germany, 345-6; desire for negotiation re Germany, 358-9; parliamentary system, 391 Franco, General Francisco, 415-17, 427, 429-31, 435, 442-3 Fran~ois-Poncet, Andre, 106, 329, 347, 369-70 Frankford (Ontario), 14, 274 Frankfurt, 332, 337, 367, 370, 383; economic administration at, 335 Fraser, Peter, 318 Fraternities, 12 Free Press, Winnipeg, 220 French Canadians and the N.P.A.M., see under Army, Canadian French, Field-Marshal Sir John (Viscount), 143 Fuller, Maj.-Gen. J. F. C.: on tank warfare, 58 Fusiliers du St. Laurent, Les, 172 GALLIPOLI, 188 Garneau, L'Ecole, 6 Gamons (England), 158 Gaspe, 24; Jacques Cartier celebration, 94-6

Index Gatow, 314 Gembloux, 45 Geneva, 387 Genoa, 444 Georgian Bay Canal, 13 German people: strength of, 292-3; a race of stoics, 306; de-nazification of, 323, 326; Anglo-German relations, 353, 368-9; will power, 386 Germany, 102, 187; study of war with, 103-7; division of, 244-5, 299, 328-9, 362; occupation, 292, 301-3, 322-9; agricultural conditions, 293; administration by allied forces, 298-9; currency reform, 302, 335, 340; Federal Republic, 302, 367-8, 369, 377; food situation, 305-6; internal finances, 306-7; black market, 307-9; steel industry, 328; centralization of administration, 328-9, 332; West Germany, 331-2, 335-6, 348, 356, 362-4; Central Government, 332, 335-6; Eastern Zone, 332, 344, 363; Constituent Assembly, 345, 348, 354; rumours of war, 348-51; French viewpoint, 352; British viewpoint, 353; Parliamentary Council, 354; review of situation, 1949, 362-3; unemployment, 366; dismantling, 368-9; Civil Mission in Bonn, 371-86; letters of credence, 373; rearmament, 377, 378; revision of income tax law, 379 Ghellinck, Vicomte de, 387 Gibraltar, 210, 440-2, 444 Gibson, Maj.-Gen. Ralph, 173 Gift of Tongues (Schloss), 20 Glasgow, 158 Glen Yard, Westmount, 19, 23 Globe, Toronto (newspaper), 15 Godbout, Adelard, 224 Godesberg, 129, 370, 372 Goering, Reichsmarschal H., 314, 323 Goethals, General Georges (Baron), 321, 343, 400, 410 Goethe, Wolfgang, 321 Gold Coast, 80 Gondola Operation, 403-4 Gough, General Sir Hubert, 36 Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, IO Grand Trunk Railway, 5 Graydon, Gordon, 269 Great Britain, see United Kingdom Greef, Colonel de, 404 Greening, Lieut. Owen, 28 Greenland, 144, 145

453

Grigg, Sir Edward, 120 Grunewald, 305 Guadarama Mountains, 435 Gudvangen, 396 Guipuzcoa, 434 Gutt, Camille, 289 HAHN, J., 235 Haining, General Sir R. H., 153 Haldane, Lord, 127 Halifax (N.S.), 47, 145 Handy, J. E., 313 Hanover, 314 Hanson, R. B., 255 Harlech (North Wales), 55 Harz Mountains, 321, 334 Hastings County (Ontario), 14, 16 Haydu, Dr., 332 Hayes, Maj.-Gen. (U.S. Army), 372 "Hay-wire," 19-20 Hebert, Charles, 402 Hebrides, 159 Heeney, Arnold D.P., 240, 246, 251, 276, 279, 311, 313, 315; secretary to the Cabinet, 222, 223; Under Secretary of State for External Affairs, 359, 375 Heiden Bay (Alaska), 218 Hellas, 232 Helmstedt, 322, 350 Henry, Maj.-Gen. Guy V., 218 Hepburn, Mitchell, 280 Herwarth, Baron von, 371, 374, 384 Hesperian, s.s., 26, 27, 145 Hesse, 368 Heuss, Theodor, 373 Hickerson, John D., 162-3, 188, 217, 232, 233, 252-3, 272, 296, 331; Alaska Operation, 214 Hicks, A. J. (Art.), 583-4 Highlanders of Canada, 48th (CASF), see under Army, Canadian Highlands (Montreal), 18-19 Hilton, James, 44-5 Hindenburg Line, 39 Hiroshima, 244, 276 Hitler, Adolph, 91, IOI, 102, 105, 137, 140, 145, 149, 189, 324, 326 Holding Units, 151 Holmes, Sir Stephen, 130 Hong Kong, 53, 76, 80; U.K. request for troops, 173; a political decision, 173; dispatch of Force, 173-4; reverse at, 174; selection of units for, 175-6; Royal Commission of Inquiry, 182

454

Index

Hopkins, Harry, 201, 265 Home, Vice-Admiral (U .S. Navy), 183 Hospital ship: Canadian wish for, 237 Howe, C. D., 200, 201, 237 Hughes, Col. H. T., 33, 46, 50, 51 Hull, Cordell, 221 Hull-Ottawa fire (1900), 6-7 Humphrys, Miss Cherry, 6 Hungary: Political and Territorial Commission on, 316-18; transfer of minority from Czechoslovakia, 318 Husky Operation, 212; see also Sicily Hyde Park (N.Y.), 222

JAGO, 49 Iceland, 159, 244 Ilsley, J. L., 201, 313 Immigration, Dept. of, 432 Imperial Conferences, 53; mock at I.D.C., 98-101; 1937, 131-2 Imperial defence, 108-22; Staff College, Camberley, 61; discussion at I.D.C., 99-101; essay, 108-22 Imperial Defence, Committee of, 108, 126, 127, 128 Imperial Defence College, 53, 82, 188, 225; Crerar to (1934), 82; nomination to (1936), 98-107 India, 188 Indian Ocean, 187 Infantry battalions (C.E.F.), see under Army, Canadian Infantry brigades (C.E.F.), see under Army, Canadian Inglis Company, 234, 235 Inter-Allied Protocol Division, Berlin, 297 Inter-Allied Reparations Agency, Brussels, 287 Ironside, Edmund, Lord, 59-60 Islander, Charlottetown (newspaper), 3 Ismay, Lord, 241; memoirs, 127, 175 Italy: invasion of, 153, 189, 229, 230, 373 Ivigtut, Greenland, 144 JAcoB, FIELD--MARSHAL Sm CLAUDE, 128 Jacob, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Ian, 186, 226, 272 Japan, 243-4; study of war with, 103; U.S.'s principal enemy, 186, 187 Japanese: in California, 178; in Canada (1941), 176-8 Jean, Prince of Luxembourg, 409, 411 Jenkins, Sir Gilmour, 31 l Jenkins, Lt.-Col. J. H., 213-20

Johnson, Edward, 46 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 63, 404 Joint Planners: British, 188, 212; U.S., 188 Joint War Committee, Canada-U.K., 228 Jomini, General Henri, 150 Josephine-Charlotte, Princess of Luxembourg, 409, 411 Jota, 435 Journal, Ottawa (newspaper), 178, 181 KAISER, JACOB, 323 Karlshorst, 297-8 Karlsruhe, 377 Kashmir, 67 Kasserine Pass, 175 Keating, General, 311 Keenleyside, Hugh, 176 Keitel, Field-Marshal W., 298 Kelowna (B.C.), 66 Kemball, Lt.-Col. H. G., 34 Kennedy, Major Clark, 34 Kennedy, President J. F., 365 Keyes, Admiral Sir Roger, 94, 95 Khrushchev, Nikita, 364 King, Admiral Ernest J., 185, 187, 205, 237 King, W. L. Mackenzie, 225, 227-8, 242, 268; his political wisdom, 92; speech on defence estimates (1937), 124-5; international situation (1937), 126; speech, Feb. 19, 1937, 133, 134; Skelton's remark, 138; Canadian-U.S. Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 150; 7th British Corps becomes 1st Canadian Corps, 155, 157-8; establishment of P.J.B.D., 162; sustained at polls (1940), 167; meeting of Pacific Council, 196-7; employment of Canadian Army, 211-12; author to return to Canada, 221; Quebec Conference, 222-3; author appointed military staff officer to, 240; author's first Cabinet War Committee, 245-6; conscription crisis (1944 ), 246-60; San Francisco Conference (1945), 26971; Canadian general election (1945), 273; signs charter, 276; personal characteristics, 277-82; in some respects a Tory, 278-9; five-cent speech, 280; Canada unready (1938), 281; letter from, 281-2; visit to Berlin and Nuremberg, 312-16; at Hitler's

Index bunker, 313; disappointment at Paris Peace Conference (1946), 319-20 Kingsmere, 215, 280 Kiska, 214, 227 Kittredge, Malachi, 21 Koeltz, General, 296 Koenig, General, 296, 305, 355; chasse ofliciel, 351 Koenigsberg, 374 Korea, 268, 397 Kotokoff, General (U.S.S.R.), 342 Kunkel, Dorothea, 373-5, 382 393, 394, 395 Laerdal river, 396 La Granja, 435 LaGuardia, Fiorello H., 220, 282-3, 313; chairman P.J.B.D., 162, 164-6 Landon, Brig. A. H . W. (Bill), 133 Lane, Cmdr. H. A. C., 135 Langley, J., 407 Languedoc, 422 Lanrezac, Gen. Charles, 143 Lapointe, Ernest, 144, 277 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 5, 204, 246, 282; Laurier Government, 16, 18-19 Laurier, Lady, 5, 204 Laurier House, 5, 278, 279 Law, Richard, 264 Lawrence, Mr. Justice (Lord Oaksey), 315 Lawson, Maj. J. K., 53, 74 Lazier, Stuart, 14 League of Nations, 89; Covenant, 267 Lech river, 337 Leckie, Air Marshal R., 355 Lefevre, Rene, 390 Lemaire, E. J., 94 Lemgo, 291 Lens, 35, 292 Leopold III, King of the Belgians, 387, 389, 393, 395, 408 LePan, Douglas, 284 Letson, Maj.-Gen. H. F. G., 241 Levis (Que.), 69 Liaison letters (C.G.S.), 129 Libourne (France), 405 Liege, 385, 393 Lieven, 40, 292 Ligne, Prince de, 401 Lisgar Collegiate, 7 Little, Admiral, 185 Litvinov, Maxim, 101 Lleras Camargo, Senor, 271 LAEKEN, PALACE OF,

455

Lloyd George, D., 92; speech to 4th Div., 59 "Localitis," 170 Locarno Pact, 102, 118, 120 Loebe, Herr, 343, 344 Loisach river, 337 London (Eng.), 7; visit to in 1943, 220-1 London (Ont.), 17 Long Branch Camp (Toronto), 52 Loos, 33 Lord Strathcona's Horse (Regiment), 7 Los Angeles, "battle of," 178-9 Loups garous, 33 Low Countries, 102; winter in, 46 Lowenstein, M., 402 Lower, A. R. M., 133 Lowndes, H. Selby, 28 Lukyanchenko, General (U.S.S.R.), 342 Lumpkins, Tony, 21 Luxembourg, 389, 393, 397-400 " MACAULAY," 440 McCallister, Aeneas, I 6 McCann, Lieut. S., 37 McCarthy, Leighton, 183, 184, 197, 201, 252; relations with, 203-4 McCloy, J. J., 369 McCooey, Capt. L. E. (Larry), 96 McCordick, J. A., 414 Macdonald, Bruce, 387 Macdonald, John, 14 Macdonald, Sir John A., 3, 4, 19, 246, 256-7, 281-2; election manifesto, 1891, 72; holograph letter, 277-8 Macdonald, Malcolm, 100 Macdonnell, Brig.-Gen. A. H. (Long Archie), 34 Macdonnell, J. M. (Long Jim), 134 Macdonnell, R. M. (Ronnie) , 333 McGill University, 10, 13, 17; early days at, 11-13 McGinnity, "Iron Man," 20 MacIntosh, Capt. MacGregor, 177 Mackay, Henry Martin, 11 Mackenzie, Ian, 132, 137, 140, 176 McKenzie and Mann, Messrs, 10 Macklin, Maj.-Gen. W . H. S., 135, 173-4 McMaster University, 132 MacMillan, Gen. Sir Gordon, 441 Macmillan, John, 7 Macmillan, Lord, 53 McNamey, Lt.-Gen. Joseph T., 217-18, 296

456

Index

McNaughton, Gen. A. G. L., 72, 82-3, 98, 150, 154, 170, 195, 210, 255, 259; defence plans, 93; visit to Washington (March 1942), 183; relinquishes command of Army, 237 MacNeill, J. H., 144 MacNicoll, David, 20 McQueen, Col. John, 283, 284, 293, 294, 296, 303-4, 313, 323, 334, 382 Macready, Lt.-Gen. Sir Gordon, 153, 154, 157, 185, 209, 223, 226, 227 Madariaga, Salvador de, 426-8 Madrid, 185, 411, 413-45 Magdeburg, 293, 324 Maginot Line, l 04 Maguire, E. H., 414, 431 Maida Vale, 32 Mail and Empire, Toronto (newspaper), 15 Mallet, Sir lvo, 433, 444 Malley, Bernard, 431 Marienburg (Cologne), 372 Marriage, 50-1 Marshall, Gen. George C., 183, 184, 185, 187, 189, 205, 228; Gen. McNaughton visits, 170, 183; Kiska Operation, 215, 216-17; rumoured to be Generalissimo Allied Forces, 231; views on desirability of Dept. of War, 245; Marshall Plan, 331 Martin Artajo, Sr. D. Alberto, 413, 440 Masaryk, Jan, 317, 333 Massey, Vincent, and Mrs. Massey, 158 Massey Trust, 158 Matapan, 185 Mathewson, Christy, 21 Mathieu, Monsieur, 270 Mattawa, 13 Maude, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Stanley, 8 Mavor, Brig. W., 234 Maynooth (Ont.), 17 Mediterranean, 186, 189, 207, 209, 213 Meighen, Arthur, 278 Mena House, 439 Merode, Prince Amaury de, 393 Mesopotamian campaign, World War I, 188 Metis Beach, 365, 433 Meyer, Kurt, 291 Middle East, 186-7 Military Districts: no. 2 (Toronto), 52; no. 11 (Esquimalt), 63 Military Missions, Allied, Berlin, 277, 283-4, 295-7, 303, 321-2 Military Staff Officer to the P.M., 241

Militia Staff Course (Canadian), 65-6, 73 Minneapolis, 218 Mobilization Instructions, 97, 160 Model School, Ottawa, 6 Molotov, V., 271, 272, 319, 331 Molson, P. T., 334, 367, 376, 377 Moltke, Field-Marshal Karl B. von, 104 Monroe Doctrine, 144-5 Mont Houy, 39 Mont Joli, 172 Mont St. Eloi, 37 Montague, Lt.-Gen. Price, 151, 152, 221 Montgomery, Field-Marshal Sir Bernard (Viscount), 187, 238, 296, 439 Montreal, 17, 18, 23, 24, 4 7 Moodie, Campbell, 313 Moore, Freda, 437-8 Moran, H. 0 . (Herb.), 372 Morrison-Bell, Maj. A. C., 8 Moscow Conference (1947), 330 Mother Brown, 44 Moyse, Dean, 11 Munich, 136, 140, 316, 378; weeks preceding, 134-6; Canada unready at time of, 281 Munitions and Supply, Dept. of, 201 Munitions assignment, 207, 233-4; ball bearings, 234-6 Munitions Assignment Board, Combined, 200-1 Munroe, Ross, 313 Munster, 292 Murchie, Lt.-Gen. J. C., 154, 234, 239, 242, 246; appointed C.G.S., 238; Chief of Staff C.M.H.Q., 283 Murmansk, 80 Murphy, Robert, 296, 304, 313, 388 Murray, W. E. G., 142 Murray Bay, 18, 26 Mussolini, Benito, 222 NATO, see North Atlantic Treaty Organization N.P.A.M., see Non-Permanent Active Militia under Army, Canadian Nachod, Battle of, 57 Namur, 45, 401 Napier, Gen. Sir Charles, 4 IO Narcea river, 443 Narvik, 175 National Defence, Dept. of, 123-4; organization compared with War Office, 77-80; Deputy Minister, Office of, 77, 79; military training, 81-2

Index National Defence College, Canada, 409-10 National Defence Headquarters, 257-9; appointed to (1933), 81; in the thirties, 81-3, 89-98; in 1937-9, 123-36; World War II, 137-45, 148; in 1941, 160-81; see also Conscription crisis National Resources Mobilization Act: soldiers in good frame of mind, 172; at Kiska, 227; decision to dispatch overseas, 255-6 Nattress, "Natty," 21 Navigation Act, 128 Nazism, 298-9, 323, 326-7 Nerissa, s.s., 158-9 Neubiberg-Miinchen, 378 Neurath, Baron von, 314 New York Times, 239 New Zealand: Government, 193; deployment table (air), 198; Military Mission, 202 Niagara Camp, 52 Niagara Falls (N.Y.), 97 Nice, 444 Noble, Admiral Sir Percy, 185, 237 Noiret, General, 305, 313, 329, 346: French outlook on Germany, 351-3 Noiret, Madame, 313 Nome (Alaska), 219 Non-Permanent Active Militia, see under Army, Canadian Normandy, 187, 227, 238 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 268, 377; Council meeting in Brussels, 397 Northclilfe, Lord, 57 Norway, 210, 315, 396 Nurember~, 21, 281; trial, 314-15 "The Nut' (German gardener), 342-3 Nye, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Archibald, 55-7, 153, 221, 222, 316 OMGUS, see Office of Military Government, U.S. Oakland, 269 Oder river, 378 Odium, Brig.-Gen. Victor, 34, 35, 37 Oedekoven, Karl-Heinz (Forstmeister), 345-6 Office of Military Government, U.S. (Berlin), 304 Ogdensburg: communique, 150; declaration, 161-2 Okanagan Valley, 66

457

Oldenburg, 291, 294, 375 O'Leary, Grattan, 11 Oliver, Dudley, 42 One Hundred Days, 38 Orange Order, 17 Oranienburg, 332 Orde, Brig. R. W. (Reg.), 80 O'Rourke, 14 Oslo, 396 Ottawa, 4, 6, 7; early days, 8-9; in I 944, 240-68 Ottawa-Hull fire (1900), 6 Overlord Operation, 227 Oxford University Press, 72 P.J.B.D., see Permanent Joint Board on Defence Paaschendaele, Battle of, 36-7, 59, 295 Pacific, war in, I 78, 187-9; strategy, 230; plans for, 242; Quebec Conference (1944), 243-4 Pacific Council, I 95, I 96; institution, 193-4 Pacific Ocean, operations in, 187; Canadian plans for, 242 Padilla, Sr., 271 Page, Lieut. A. A., 25 Painleve, Paul, 344 Palacio de Oriente, 414 Palmer, Edward, 3 Panet, Maj.-Gen. Henri, 52 Papas, George, 437-8 Papen, Franz von, 314 Paris Peace Conference (1946), 311-20 Parkinson's law, 203 Parliamentary Council, see Germany Parliament Hill, 7 Parlow, Mr. (Headmaster), 7 Parmelee, George, and Mrs. Parmelee, 21 Parmelee, Miss Mabel, 21 Pearkes, Maj.-Gen. George, 215 Pearl Harbor, 176, 177, 178, 190, 201 Pearson, L. B. (Mike), 207, 209, 263, 266; author's faux pas, 203-4; Official Secretary at Canada House, 228, 238; author replaces at Press Conference, 238; letter to, 267-9; Minister Counsellor Canadian Embassy, Washington, 30 I; furnished copies of Canadian J.S.M. reports on strategic questions to C.O.S., 384; Ambassador to Washington, 396; visits Berlin, 458, 514; convokes meeting of ambassadors

458

Index

in Paris, 585, 631; offers Madrid post, 593; letter on author's retirement, 640 Pearson, Mrs. L. B., 354 Penny, Edgar, 70 Penticton (B.C.), 66 Perley, Sir George, 96 Permanent Force, see under Army, Canadian Permanent Joint Board on Defence (Can.-U.S.), 161-7; Ogdensburg communique, 150; establishment of, 150, 161; defence plans, 163-6; Montreal meeting (April 1941), 163-4; Montreal disagreement, 163-4, 188; Washington meeting (May 1941), 164-5; good relations within, 166; loan of Newfoundland lumber, 166-7; retention of appointment to (I 942), 213; visit to Alaska, 218-20 Perry, Parker, 418 "Pertinax," 136, 147, 329 Petawawa Camp, 23 Peten, Ludo, 401, 405 Petersberg, 370-1 Pettit, William, 17 Philip II, King of Spain, 421 Pica, General, 332, 333, 334 Pickersgill, J. W., 246, 255, 269, 416 Pidal, Ramon Menendez, 412, 421, 427 Pinault, Col. J. E., I 72 Pink, Ivor, 303, 322, 373 Place Viger Station (Montreal), 19 Playfair, Maj.-Gen., 296 Pointe St. Charles, 24 Pointe St. Joseph: rural militia camp, 69 Poland, 102, 137; National Day reception, 347; views on German problem, 357-8 Police Force, International: proposed, 266 Pommerol, 405 Pope, Edward, 4 Pope, Lt.-Col. E. W. (Billy), 29, 42 Pope, H. W. D., 419 Pope, Joseph (1803-95), 3 Pope, Sir Joseph (d. 1926), 3, 4, 5, 240, 282, 315; memoirs, 72, 277-8 Pope, Joseph J. (1921- ), 145 Pope, Simonne (Mrs. Maurice Pope), 50-1 , 145, 311 Pope, Miss Simonne, 145, 31 I Pope, T. M., 145, 311, 396 Pope, William Henry (1825-79), 3,

IOI

Pope, Maj. William Henry (1923- ), 145 Pope, Lt.-Col. V. V., 55, 75, 316 Poperinghe, 50-1; Skindles Hotel, 51 Portal, Marshal of R.A.F. Sir C. F. A. (Viscount), 103, 225 Porter, Gus, 16 Porter, Brig. W., 212, 221, 226 Post-hostilities problems, 263; Planning Committee paper, 266-8 "Post-War Politico-Military Organization": study of, 264 Potsdam, 300, 302; Accord, 329 Power, C. G. (Chubby), 134, 139 Prague, 332-3 Prawin, General, 357-8 "Precautionary Stage," 137 Preparatory course, R.M.C. (Kingston), 52, 73 Press Gallery: Hong Kong affair, I 74 Prince Edward County (Ont.), 16 Prince Edward Island, 3, 27 Principal Supply Officers Committee (U.K.), 128 Privy Council, London, 315 Privy Council Secretariat, Canada, 263 Provence, 422 Public Servant, 19fn, 72 Pyrenees, 412 QUADRIPARTITE CONTROL COUNCIL POR GERMANY, see Allied Control Council Queant-Drocourt Line, 39 Quebec: Conference (1864), 3; Louise Embankment, 21; posted to, 48; appointed G.S.O., 68; Chain Gate, 69; renovation at Citadel, 69-70; Conference (1943), 222-31; report, 228-31; Conference (1944), 241-5; summary of decisions, 243-5 Quetta (Staff College), 53 RAE, SAUL, 222, 313 Ralston, J. L., 164, 184, 200, 212, 221, 238, 239; 7th British Corps and 1st Canadian Corps, 15 5-7; recruiting appeal, 168; shortage of Frenchspeaking officers, 171; Japanese on West Coast, I 78; shortage of rifles, Reserve Army, 179-80; Kiska operation, 215-17; conscription crisis (1944), 246-60; note of interview with, 248-50 Random Harvest, 44-5 Rastatt, 35 I

Index Read, John, 129 Reading, Lord, 67 Reb's Riding Academy, 25 Reciprocity election campaign (1911), 18-19 Recruiting, 168-72; J. L. Ralston's appeal, 168-9; French Canadian, 16970, 171-2 Red Ensign, 223-4 Redman, Brig.-Gen. Sir H., 223 Regional security, 266, 268, 399 Reichstag, 307 Reid, Vice-Admiral H. E., 164, 177 Reinforcements: Reinforcement Units, 151; insufficiently trained, 246 Remagen (Germany), 371 Reparations Conference (Paris, l 945 ), 284-90 Reserve Army, see under Army, Cana· dian Retirement, 404, 4ll, 442 Reuter, Ernst, 343, 344, 345; views on Allied Occupation of Germany, 323-7; views on situation, Sept. 1949, 36t:r7 Reuter, Frau, 343 Rhineland, 91, 102, 140, 329 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 21 Riddell-Webster, Gen. Sir T. S., 228 Rideau Canal, 6 Rideau Club, 25 5 Ritchie, Charles, 269, 276 Ritz Hotel: London, 43; Madrid, 41718, 435 Riviera, French, 46, 51 Riviere du Loup, 3, 4, 26 Roberts, Maj.-Gen. J. H. ("Ham"), 148 Robertson, Gen. Sir Brian, 296, 297, 313, 335, 336, 355, 370, 377 Robertson, Lady, 313, 377 Robertson, Norman, 174, 207, 222, 223, 269, 273, 276, 277, 283, 284, 286, 316 Robertson, Field-Marshal Sir William ('Wally"), 181 Robins, W. D., 94 Rockclilie Camp, 25-7 passim Rodger, Maj.-Gen. Elliot, 93, 148 Rolin, Henri, 389 Rome, 46; question of bombing, 232-3 Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin, 65, 185, 186, 226; establishment of P.J.B.D., 150, 161; Gen. McNaughton visits, 183; Italian front, 221-3; message to Mussolini (1940), 223; at Yalta, 332fn; author's visit with, 253-4

459

Rose, Charlie, l 7 Ross, Brig.·Gen. J. M., 63 Round-up Operation, 212 Rowlands, Sir Archibald, 79, 101, 102 Royal Canadian Engineers: appointment to, 48 Royal Institute of International Affairs: Canada, 132; London, 150 Royal Military College (Kingston), 52, 73 Royal Victoria College (McGill), 12 Rueff, Jacques, 285, 288, 290 Ruhr, 329; internationalization, 335 Rumania, 102 Rupprecht of Bavaria, Prince, 329 Russia, 102, 135-6; policy re Germany, 301-2; Russian receptions, 334; occupation of Germany, 33t:r8, 340; Berlin Blockade, 341-65 SAFFROY, MONSIEUR, 398 Ste Agathe, 19 Sainte Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 4 St. Francis Hotel (San Francisco), 269 Ste lrenee, 17 St. James Club (Montreal), 18 St. Laurent, Louis, 269, 273, 339 St. Lawrence River (Lower), 4, 9, 17, 276, 365 St. Omer, 32 St. Patrick (Que.), 3, 4, 8, II, 17, 23 St. Peter's (Rome), 46 St. Pierre-et-Miquelon, 96 Salisbury, Lord, 128, 189 Salmon, Maj.-Gen. H. L. N., 131 Salt Spring Island, 67 Salvelinus fontinalis, 9 San Francisco, 179; U.N. Conference, 268-76; Golden Gate Park, 271 San Martin de Hoyos, Condesa, 418 Sansom, Lieut.·Gen. E. W., 60, 69 San Sebastian, 433-4, 444 Santo Mauro, Duchess, 418 Sardinia, 210 Saturnia, s.s., 47 Sauckel, 314 Schloss, Margaret, 20 Schroeder, Fraulein, 327 Schumacker, Kert, 329, 368 Schumann, R., 367 Schumann Plan, 409 Scinde, 410 Scott, Col. Clyde, 140 Scott, Frank, 133 Scott, Col. Morley, 291

460

Index

Scott, Sir Richard, 5 Sellier, Ernest de, 289 Senior Officers School (Sheerness), 53 Sera jevo, 22 Seville, 4 22 Sforza, Count, 397 Sharp, "Gillie," l 5 Sheerness, 53 Sherman, Admiral Forrest P., 162, 164, 166, 188 Shorncliffe, 27, 29 Shott, W. (Bill), 369-70 Sicily: invasion of, 152, 153, 189, 207, 209-10, 222, 229 Siegfried, Andre, 272 Sifton, Sir Clifford, 18 Sikorsky, General Ladislas-Eugene, 205 Simmonds, Lieut.-Gen. Guy, 373 Simmons, "Doc.," 15 Singapore, 173 Six Years of War (Stacey), 90, 129, 145; Battle of Los Angeles, 178-9 Skagway, 218 Skelton, Dr. C. D., 127, 138 Skindles Hotel (Poperinghe), 51 Skjolden river, 396 Slessor, Marshal of R.A.F. Sir John, 198 Smith, Arnold, 387, 397, 402, 404, 407, 410 Smith, Norman, 322 Smith, Lieut.-Gen. W. Bedell, 198 Smuts, Field-Marshal J. C., 274, 318, 353 Sogne Fiord, 396 Sokolovsky, Marshal, 297-8, 327, 342, 347; walks out of Control Council, 336; currency reform, 340-1 Sole, D. B., 286 Somme, 31, 51, 147; Battle of, 33, 36 South Africa, Union of, 290 South African War, 7 South East Asia Treaty Organization, 268 Spa (Belgium), 400 Spaak, Paul-Henri, 271, 312, 367, 381, 389-90, 391, 393 Spain, 413-45; cultural relations with Canada, 413; unfamiliar to Canadians, 420-1; Spanish characteristics, 420-5; isolation, 421; Roman and Arab influence, 422; Roman Catholicism, 422-3; Government, 426--30; economic development, 430; future of, 430-1; Canadian trade treaty, 431-2; see also Franco, General Francisco

Spanish flu, 38 Spee, Admiral von, 61 Spencerwood (Quebec), 224 Stacey, Col. C. P., 71, 145 Staff Colleges: Camberley, 52, 53; Quetta, 53; value of, 153 Stalin, Joseph, 301 Starkie, Walter, 427 Stassen, Harold E., 274 Statute of Westminster (1931), 114 Steel, Sir Christopher, 303, 367-8, 373, 377 Steel, Lady, 377 Stettinius, Edward R., 265, 270 Steveston (B.C. ), 178 Stimson, Henry L., 217 Stowe (Vermont), 418 Strang, Sir William (Lord), 296, 313 Strasoourg, 381 Strong, General George V., 204 Stuart, Lieut.-Gen. Kenneth, 132, 161, 163, 181, 209, 210, 221, 227-8, 258; announced essay competition, 70-1; views on Japanese in B.C., 177; visit to the West Coast (Jan. 1942), 179; inactivity of Canadian troops, 202; Kiska orration, 214-16; appointed Chief o Staff C.M.H.Q., London, 237; conscription crisis (1944), 247 Sturdee, Admiral Frederick, 61 Suez Canal, 186; United Nations action, 269 Summerside (P.E.I.), 3 Surcouf (French submarine), 145 Surrey (England), 24 Swan & Edgars (London), 44 Sweden, 426 Sweetman's Hall (Frankford, Ont.), 16 Switzerland, 373 Synoptic Table, 286 TALLEYRAND, PRINCE DB, 369 Talon, Lake, 13 Tanks: used for first time, 33; offensive power, 42 Taschereau, Alexandre, 319 Taschereau, Sir Henri, 3, 11 Taschereau, Henriette, 3-5 Taurroggen, 302, 354 Taylor, "Dummy," 21 Teheran Conference, 237 Tete du Pont Barracks (Kingston), 52 Theron, Maj-Gen. F. H., 312 Thompson, Walter, 141, 143 Thuringia, 301

Index Times, The, 103, 350, 377 Toledo, 436 Torres, Baron de las, 413-16 rassim Trade and Commerce, Dept. o, 432 Training manuals: translated into French, 69 Transcontinental Railway, 5 Tremaine, Mrs. Victor, 21 Trenton (Ont.), 17 Trent Valley Canal, 14 Trident Conference, 212 Truman, President Harry, 397 Tupper, Sir Charles Hibbert, 277 Turn of the Tide (Arthur Bryant), 186 Turnbull, Walter, 222, 251 UNAMUNO, MIGUEL DE, 421-2 Unconditional surrender, 298 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, see Russia United Kingdom: general election, 1931, 81; foreign policy discusion at I.D.C., 101-7; British Constitution, II 5-16, 120; military strength, 118; defensive preparations, 117-18; Dom.inion cooperation, 119, 120; Locarno Treaty, 118; U.K. and U.S. views on strategy, 185-92; rumours of cross-channel operation, 195-7 United Nations, 266-76; International Police Force, 266; Dumbarton Oaks, 266, 268; World Council, 267; Korea, Suez and the Congo, 268-9; Security Council, 274, 393; veto, 274-5; Charter, 275, 276; Economic and Social Council, 387 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (uNRRA), 189 United States: State Dept., 144-5; executive organization, 265-6; Berlin Blockade, 346-7 United States Army, see Army, U.S. Urals, 294

V. J. DAY, 276 Valcartier Camp, 24, 69, 172 Valenciennes, 39, 42, 45 Vancouver (B.C.), 134, 179, 218, 273 Vanier, Maj.-Gen. Georges, 172, 284, 285, 317 Vendome, Hotel (Paris), 284 Verdun, 147 Verdy du Vernois, 57

461

Vernon (B.C.), 66 Versailles, Chateau de, 39, 435; reception at, 319 Vesey, Maj.-Gen. Sir lvo, 75 Victoria, Queen: Diamond Jubilee, 7 Victoria (B.C.), 64, 67, 68 Victory, H.M.S., 27 Vienna, Congress of, 339 Villadarias, Marques de, 418 Villeneuve, Cardinal, 95, 172, 242 Villiers-Stuart, Col. J. P., 55 Vimy Ridge, 38, 40, 51; Battle of, 34 Virginian, The (Owen Wister), 15 Vishinsky, Andrei, 365 Visiting Forces Act, 80, 151 Vitoria, 444 "Voice of England," 107 Vokes, Maj.-Gen. Chris., 291, 375 Voltigeurs de Quebec, Les, see under Army, Canadian Vulnerable Points Committee, 130-1 Vyle et Tharoul, 401 WADDELL, "RUBE," 21 Wagner, "Honus," 21 Waley, Sir David, 286, 287, 288, 290 Walmsley, Miss D. R., 419 Walsh, Air Vice-Marshal George, 178, 184, 197 Wahnerheide, 370, 376 War Book, Canadian, 128, 240 War Committee of the Cabinet: appointed representative in Washington, 184-5; appointed Military Secretary, 241; meeting with Churchill and British C.O.S. (Quebec, 1944), 242; meeting Sept. 20, I 944, 245-6; conscription crisis, 247-61; value of, 264; post-hostilities problems, 276-7; secretarial capacity in, 279 War Criminals, 232; see also Nuremberg War Emergency Legislation Committee, 129 War Office, 53, 72, 74-81; appointment to, 72-3, 74-81; Directorate of Staff Duties, 74; security at, 74; co-ordination of General Staff opinion, 74-5; organization, 76-80; P.U.S., 76-7; Finance Branch, 76-9; Army Council, 77-8; 'War Room," 148 War telegrams, 138, 139 Warne, C.S.M., 294 Warner, Sir Christopher, 404, 406, 408 Wartime law, see Defence regulations

462

Index

Washington, D.C., 48, 170; Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 162, 163-4; representative of War Committee of the Cabinet on C.J.S.M., 183-220 Waterloo battlefield, 45 Waterloo Place (London), 42 Watson, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Daryl, 75 Watson, Lord, 315 Watson Lake, 218 Wavell, Field-Marshal Sir A. P. (Earl), 135 Wehrer, Col. Albert, 343, 346 Weimar, 326 Weir, Sir Cecil, 409 Weld, J., 323 Wemyss, Maj.-Gen., 184, 185, 192 West Coast: appointment, Esquimalt, 63-8 West Indies, 100 Westmount, 19, 20 Whitehorse, 218, 219 Wiesbaden, 292 Wight, Isle of, 149 Wilgress, Dana, and Mrs. Wilgress, 319 Williams, Brig. M. Z., 202 Williams, Sir John Hanbury, 315 Williams, Sapper, 32

Willingdon, Marquess of, and Lady Wilfingdon, 70, 278 Willkie, Wendell, 331 Windsor Hotel (Montreal), 163 Windsor Street Station (Montreal), 19 Winnipeg, 219 Wisconsin, 427 Wister, Owen, 15 Wolsley Barracks (London, Ont.), 17 Woodrow, R. D., 415 Woodward, Sir Llewellyn, 14 7 World Council: proposal for, 267 Wrong, Hume, 197, 200, 240, 263, 269, 276, 279, 287 YALTA CoNFERENCE, 266, 275, 301, 332 Yorck, General, 302 Young, Maj.-Gen. Hugh, 158 Ypres Salient, 30, 36, 51 Ypsilanti, Prince, 346 Yugoslavia, 189 ZARAUZ, 433, 434 Zeeland, Paul van, 388, 404, 509-10 Zhukov, Marshall, 296, 297 Zidlochovice, 333 "Zombie," 227