ing in their fields
and on their tiny farms, less than a mile from the trenches. It is their
home. It is France or it is Belgium, and love of country and that which is
theirs is stronger than fear of death. Some one of them may be blown to
pieces as he works; it makes no difference. They do not leave as long as it
is possible to remain, or as long as the Allied armies will permit them to
stay.

Their houses may be leveled, they may only find shelter in a half ruined
cellar. Often they may go hungry, but always there is a grim determination
to stick to their own, to till the ground which has kept them, which has
kept their parents and great-grandparents, and which they mean shall keep
their children when victory, which they know is inevitable, is complete.

They have a wonderful faith.

The casualties of the French army have never been made public. We do not
know them. It may be that they will never be told to a curious world.
France may have had her body crushed almost beyond endurance, but the
unspeakable Hun--the barbarian, the crusher of hope and love and
ideals--has not even made a dent on the wonderful spirit of France.

France is superb. In the parlance of the man in the street, we all "take
off our hats" to this valiant country.

I could tell of the most horrible things possible for human mind to
conceive. I have seen things that, put in type, would sicken the reader. I
do not want to tell of these things here, evidence of them can be had from
any official document or blue-book. And yet, in justice to Belgium, I must
tell some of the least dreadful of the things I have seen and only those
that have come to me through personal experience. I do not tell from
hearsay, and I tell the truth without exaggeration.

In common with thousands of other Canadian and Imperial soldiers I saw the
evacuation and destruction of Ypres. On the morning of April 21, 1915, we
marched along the Ypres-Menin road, which road was the key to Calais, to
Paris, to London and to New York. We marched along in the early hours of
the morning, just after dawn. To our left passed a continuous stream of
refugees. We looked toward them as we went by. We saluted as they passed,
but many of us had dimmed vision.

We had heard of German atrocities. We had seen an isolated case or two as
we marched from town to town and village to village. We had not paid a
great deal of attention to them, as we had considered such things the work
of some drunken