been there the year before. It was very beautiful and
solemn. At midnight on New Year's Eve we repeated the service. Again
there was a large congregation, and to me as I looked back to the
gathering held in that place just one year ago it was quite
overpowering. How many of those who had been with us at the dawn of
1917 had passed away? The seats where they had sat were filled with
other men. The hymns they had joined in were sung by other lips. In my
heart went up the cry, "How long, O Lord, how long?" Once more the
hands of the weary world clock had passed over the weeks and months of
another year, and still the end was not in sight. As we stood in
silence, while the buglers sounded the Last Post for the dying year, a
wild and strange vision swept before me: I saw again the weary waste
of mud and the shell ploughed ridge at Vimy; the fierce attacks at
Arleux and Fresnoy; the grim assault on Hill 70 and the hellish agony
of Paschendaele. Surely the ceaseless chiselling of pain and death had
graven deeply into the inmost heart of Canada, the figures 1917.

CHAPTER XXV. (p. 234)

VICTORY YEAR OPENS.

_January and February, 1918._

Victory Year, though we did not know it by that name then, opened with
fine bracing weather, and there was the usual round of dinners and
entertainments with which we always greeted the birth of a new
twelve-month. We had several Canadian-like snow storms. In the midst
of one, I met a forlorn despatch rider coming up the main street on
his wheel with the blinding snow in his face. I stopped him and asked
him if he wouldn't like to have some dinner, and I took him into the
hotel. He had been to Bethune to buy some V.C. ribbon for one of the
men of his battalion who was going to be presented with it on the
following day, and was so proud of his mission that he made no
complaint about the long and tiring journey through the snowstorm. The
country behind Bruay is broken up into pleasant valleys, and there are
plenty of trees on the hills, so the winter aspect of the district
made us feel quite at home. I used to give many talks to the men on
what I called "The war outlook", I thought it helped to encourage
them, and I was perfectly sincere in my belief, which grew stronger as
time went on, in spite of notable set-backs, that we should have
victory before the end of the year.

We had a visit at this time from Bishop du Pencier, who c