armies
had been the same."

A new form of "casualty" had been written into the records of the
hospitals and dressing stations, "suffering from" and "died of gas
poisoning."

If there is a law of compensation which evens up injustice, if there
is an avenging Deity, then the German nation is doomed to die and be
forgotten. Cowardly methods of attack will ultimately sap the vigor
and courage of their men, and they will curse the day when their ruler
wrote them into the history of the ages as a race of cowardly
poisoners, unfit even to stand alongside of the Red Indians or the
savages of the Soudan.

The tortures inflicted by savages of burning and flaying alive are not
comparable to the torture of burning lungs with tissues seared as with
a red hot iron. The agony which often ended in gangrene of the lungs
was worse than a thousand deaths from pneumonia and the suffering is
very long drawn out.

I know whereof I speak as to the torture of scorched lungs, and my
case, I am thankful to say, was not as severe as many of them.

On the 28th all the Canadians were west of the canal having a little
rest which was enlivened constantly by salvos of high explosive shells
sent by the Germans into our vicinity. Every village and farm building
for miles back were being shelled.

In the evening we were ordered to prepare to go back into action
again. We started out at dusk and followed the familiar paths back
down to the engineers' pontoon bridge and then along up the highway in
the rear of La Bryke. We were shelled and several men hit with
shrapnel while we waited for some transports to get out of our way on
the west side of the canal.

When we got to the east and began climbing the slope we were halted
again while a battery passed us on the way out. The battery looked
very weird against the skyline as they came down the roadway and
passed us. The feet of their horses and the waggon wheels were
muffled, and they appeared for all the world like the ghostly horsemen
out of some old world tale.

We met some English soldiers who told us that the gallant Col. Geddes,
who had taken charge of this section and whose corps was the first to
come to our aid as we were trying to stop the first mad onrush of the
Germans, had been killed in the morning by a shell that entered his
headquarters.

We turned to the left and steered straight north to a point in support
of the French troops who were in position on the east bank of the
Canal