a Canadian rapids.

As for the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, old soldiers of
the South African campaign almost without exception, knowing and
hardened, their veteran experience gave them an earlier opportunity
in the trenches than the first Canadian division. Brigaded with British
regulars, the Princess Pat's were a sort of corps d'elite. Colonel
Francis Farquhar, known as "Fanny," was their colonel, and he knew
his men. After he was killed his spirit remained with them. Asked if
they could stick they said, "Yes, sir!" cheerily, as he would have
wanted them to say it.

I am going to tell the story of their fight of May 8th, not to single them
out from any other Canadian battalion, or any British battalions, but
because the story came to me and it seemed illuminative of what
other battalions had endured, this one picturesquely because of its
membership and its distance from home.

Losses in that Ypres salient at St. Eloi the P.P.s had suffered in the
winter, dribbling, day-by-day losses, and heavier ones when they had
made attacks and repulsed attacks. They had been holding down the
lid of hell heretofore, as one said graphically, and on May 8th, to use
his simile again, they held on to the edge of the opening by the skin of
their teeth and looked down into the bowels of hell after the Germans
had blown the lid off with high explosives.

It was in a big chateau that I heard the story--a story characteristic of
modern warfare at its highest pitch--and felt its thrill when told by the
tongues of its participants. There were twenty bedrooms in that
chateau. If I wished to stay all night I might occupy three or four. As
for the bathroom, paradise to men who have been buried in filthy mud
by high explosives, the Frenchman who planned it had the most
spacious ideas of immersion. A tub, or a shower, or a hose, as you
pleased. Some bathroom, that!

For nothing in the British army was too good for the Princess Pat's
before May 8th; and since May 8th nothing is quite good enough. Ask
the generals in whose command they have served if you have any
doubts. There is one way to win praise at the front: by fighting. The
P.P.s knew the way.

"Too bad Gault is not here. He's in England recovering from his
wound. Gault is six feet tall and five feet of him legs. All day in that
trench with a shell-wound in his thigh and arm. God! How he was
suffering! But not a moan, his face twitching and trying to make the
twitch