ate of
Herchmer's appointment to the Canadian Mounted Rifles to Perry's
accession to the Commissionership of the Police, the command of the
latter body had been ably held and administered by Assistant
Commissioner McIlree. Colonel McIlree, who retired from the Force a few
years ago, and whose services won the recognition of the Imperial
Service Order, was one of the original men of the corps, having joined
at the outset in 1873. He had, therefore, a long record of highly
important and creditable service when he retired in 1911, after
thirty-seven years on the frontier.

[Illustration: REV. R.G. MACBETH, M.A.]

[Illustration: GROUP, N.W.M.P., TAGISH POST. YUKON.]

When Perry returned from the Yukon (where he was succeeded by that fine
officer, Superintendent, later Assistant Commissioner, Z. T. Wood) and
assumed the Commissionership he faced an exceedingly difficult
situation. The Force was seriously depleted both in men and horses by
the inroads made upon it by the war. And at the same time the work, as
above outlined, was growing by leaps and bounds. True, recruits were
being obtained and new horses were being purchased, but every one knows
that it takes time and training to get a depleted force up to proper
strength again. But the new Commissioner had a genius for organizing and
handling men, and, as he had been away in the Yukon for a period, one of
the first things he now did was to visit the prairie detachments, study
the whole and map out a policy for the future. Conditions in the country
with rapidly changing development as well as in the Force, owing to
demands upon it, required a sort of re-creating of the famous corps, as
well as a new disposition of it to meet the new times. And Commissioner
Perry, with a great faculty for swift, decisive action, and a gift for
attracting the cooperative efforts of his officers and men, was the type
to undertake the task and succeed. Now, for a score of years he has
directed the movements of the Force, meeting the extraordinary and
unexpected situations which arise in a country that is a sort of
melting-pot of the nations. A polyglot population, a babel not only of
tongues but of ideals, the rise of new social conditions, the presence
of agitators and mischief-makers who are experts in setting men against
each other in opposing classes, the coming of destructive agents whose
theories have made some old world countries into ramshackle wrecks, the
persistence of the elements