alking
encyclopaedia of military affairs. He must be a marvel of tact and
diplomacy as well, for not only will he meet the officer who knows
nothing and appreciates that fact, but also that other type--not
uncommon in civil life as well--the man who knows nothing yet thinks he
knows all.

CHAPTER II

PETEWAWA

Petewawa is the training ground of the Canadian Field Artillery and the
Permanent Force. Until very recently it was strictly reserved for them,
and was regarded, by those who had not been there, as a sort of seventh
heaven for soldiers. Later, when the city corps were taken there for
five days one June--or was it July?--we changed our minds and decided
that, geographically speaking, it was part of one of Dante's seven
circles. At present it is the internment camp for enemy aliens, and if
they endure it for the duration of the war the Kaiser should present
them, one and all, with iron crosses.

Fifty square miles of sandy hills, covered here and there with second
growth scrub, it is an ideal ground for the purpose. The temperature
rises to 98 deg. Fahrenheit most of the days in summer. What it is like in
winter the writer does not know--probably 40 deg. below zero, as our
climate does nothing by halves.

The name, curiously enough, means "a sound (or music) as of water
falling in the distance." Anyone who has toiled through its sands in a
July sun can appreciate the subtle humour of the red man who named it.
Other attractions are sand fleas, mosquitoes, and black flies, so that
after passing through a fortnight in Petewawa one is versed in all
modern methods of warfare, including the subterranean and the aerial.

Here the artillery do all their training--heavy and fortress artillery
excepted. The latter, however, send quotas each year, though performing
their actual drill in their armouries. There are other artillery camps,
but none of the importance of Petewawa, for it is essentially an active
service camp. Jackets are strapped to the limbers, shirt sleeves rolled
to the elbows, and straw hats, locally known as "cow-breakfasts," take
the place of the more military cap. The gunner reverts to his original
state and becomes a farmer again. And he is none the less a good gunner
for so doing. Men who can understand the mechanism of a modern combined
reaper and binder have no trouble learning the recoil apparatus of an
eighteen-pounder gun, and for drivers one cannot find a better man than
the farmer, fo