307

CHAPTER XXXV.
VICTORY--November 11th, 1918 318

INDEX 321

TO (p. 007)
THE OFFICERS AND MEN
OF THE
FIRST CANADIAN DIVISION, C.E.F.

"THE UNBROKEN LINE."

We who have trod the borderlands of death,
Where courage high walks hand in hand with fear,
Shall we not hearken what the Spirit saith,
"All ye were brothers there, be brothers here?"

We who have struggled through the baffling night,
Where men were men and every man divine,
While round us brave hearts perished for the right
By chaliced shell-holes stained with life's rich wine.

Let us not lose the exalted love which came
From comradeship with danger and the joy
Of strong souls kindled into living flame
By one supreme desire, one high employ.

Let us draw closer in these narrower years,
Before us still the eternal visions spread;
We who outmastered death and all its fears
Are one great army still, living and dead.
F. G. S.

FOREWORD (p. 009)

It is with great pleasure I accede to the request of Canon Scott to
write a foreword to his book.

I first heard of my friend and comrade after the second battle of
Ypres when he accompanied his beloved Canadians to Bethune after their
glorious stand in that poisonous gap--which in my own mind he
immortalised in verse:--

O England of our fathers, and England of our sons,
Above the roar of battling hosts, the thunder of the guns,
A mother's voice was calling us, we heard it oversea,
The blood which thou didst give us, is the blood we spill for thee.

Little did I think when I first saw him that he could possibly, at his
time of life, bear the rough and tumble of the heaviest fighting in
history, and come through with buoyancy of spirit younger men envied
and older men recognized as the sign and fruit of self-forgetfulness
and the inspiration and cheering of others.

Always in the thick of the fighting, bearing almost a charmed life,
ignoring any suggestion that he should be posted to a softer job
"further back," he held on to the very end.

The last time I saw him was in a hospital at Etaples badly wo