per recruit.

Some idea of the waste of such a system may be secured when it is stated
that, with men coming forward freely, the cost of recruiting is
considerably less than $10 per man, even after allowing a generous bonus
to the recruiting sergeants. More serious than the cost in money was the
delay in training men needed at the front.

A POLITICAL IMPOSSIBILITY.

Canada's experience constitutes a severe indictment of the voluntary
system of recruiting, although sterner measures at the outset were a
political impossibility. The free-will enlistment plan had to be given a
thorough test, and its inadequacy demonstrated and repeatedly emphasized
before public opinion would support resort to compulsion.

English-speaking Canada at least learned that lesson, and it is
extremely doubtful whether the United States would have adopted the
selective draft system at the commencement of its participation in the
war, if it had not been that the experience of Canada and the United
Kingdom established the weakness inherent in the voluntary system.

Besides the camp at Valcartier, a great artillery camp was set up at
Petewawa, where the best facilities existed for long range gun practice.
Ontario saw two camps at Niagara and Camp Borden; Manitoba saw one on
the plains, Alberta another in the picturesque district near Calgary,
while British Columbia had its camp at Vernon.

INADEQUATE RECRUITING.

The volunteer recruiting in Canada, in its incipiency, while resultful,
was soon found to be not adequate. Under it, however, there was a
widespread response that stirs the blood, for men hurried to the lines
from the Yukon and the Peace Rivers; from Hudson's Bay and the farther
hinterlands, from prairie and mountain; white men and the red men;
cowboys and city chaps, harvesters and hunters, mechanics and
mountaineers, backwoodsmen and frontwoodsmen. And also among the
enlisters were thousands of Americans who fought side by side with
Canadian, Briton and Frenchman.

Canada has large German settlements, including 300,000 German and
Austrian settlers in the western provinces. Prompt action was taken on
the outbreak of the war to deal with the alien element that might prove
dangerous and disloyal. Nearly 10,000 were speedily interned, from Nova
Scotia to British Columbia. A large proportion were Austrian laborers
who had been railway navvies. These were placed in western camps and
used in building trails and roads in national par