d France and for the martial honor of Quebec. And
they held all they took as sturdily as the other Canadian battalion in
front of the village when the Germans awakened to revenge for the loss
of Courcelette.

From start to finish of that great day it had been quickness that
counted; quickness to realize opportunities; alertness of individual
action in "mopping up" after the village was taken; prompt adaptability
to situations which is the gift of the men of a new country; and that
individual confidence of the Canadian once he was not tied to a trench
and might let his initiative have full play, man to man, which is not a
thing of drill or training but of inheritance and environment. On the
right, Martinpuich was taken by the British and also held.

It was in rain and mist after the battle, while the dead still lay on
the field, that I went over the Ridge and along the path of the Canadian
charges, wondering how they had passed through the curtains of fire when
I saw shrapnel cases so thick that you could step from one to another;
wondering how men could survive in the shell-craters and the poor,
tumbled trenches in the soft, shell-mashed earth; wondering at the whole
business of their being here in France, a veteran army two years after
the war had begun. I saw them dripping from the rains, mud-spattered,
but in the joy of having made good when their turn came, and in a way
that was an exemplification of Canadian character in every detail. "Heap
good!" I suppose that big Sioux Indian, looking as natural seated in a
trench in his imperturbability as if he were seated in front of his
tepee, would have put it. He was seeing a strange business, but high
explosives shaking the earth, aeroplanes overhead, machine guns rattling
in the war of the Pale Faces he accepted without emotion.

With the second battle of Ypres, with St. Eloi, Hooge, Mount Sorrell,
and Observatory Ridge, Courcelette had completed the cycle of soldierly
experiences for those who bore the Maple Leaf in France of the
_Fleur-de-lis_. Officers and men of every walk of life called to a new
occupation, a democracy out of the west submitting to discipline had
been inured and trained to a new life of risk and comradeship and
sacrifice for a cause. It will seem strange to be out of khaki and to go
to the office, or the store, or to get up to milk the cows at dawn;
"but," as one man said, "we'll manage to adapt ourselves to it without
spending nights in a mud hol