To right and left of us there were Imperial troops, Anzacs,
Africans, and they held over fifty-five miles of line. We advanced four
miles, and papers on this continent blazed with the news. The English
advanced nine miles on the same day, and there was not so much as a
paragraph about it on this side of the Atlantic.
For every overseas soldier wounded on the western front there are six of
the Imperial troops wounded. This is true except at Lens, where the
overseas casualties were considerably heavier.
All this about Canada being in front is a German "terminological
inexactitude" which is so despicable that we in Canada are ashamed that it
should be said of us. It will injure us after the war; it will injure our
prestige in the empire, which is now higher than ever before. We are not
boasters and egotists, we are fighters. We are fighting men who live
straight and who are proud to fight straight, and who are disgusted at lies
such as this.
The British, the Imperial troops, have done magnificently. They have done
more than their share. The original agreement with France was to place
fifty thousand men in that country should Germany ever attack.
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