s had been withdrawn in turn for special training in open
warfare movements, in close cooperation with tanks and air forces. When
the time came to launch the Allied offensive, they were ready. It
was Canadian troops who broke the hitherto unbreakable Wotan line, or
Drocourt-Queant switch; it was Canadians who served as the spearhead in
the decisive thrust against Cambrai; and it was Canadians who captured
Mons, the last German stronghold taken before the armistice was
signed, and thus ended the war at the very spot where the British "Old
Contemptibles" had begun their dogged fight four years before.

Through all the years of war the Canadian forces never lost a gun nor
retired from a position they had consolidated. Canadians were the first
to practice trench raiding; and Canadian cadets thronged that branch of
the service, the Royal Flying Corps, where steady nerves and individual
initiative were at a premium. In countless actions they proved their
fitness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best that Britain and
France and the United States could send: they asked no more than that.
The casualty list of 220,000 men, of whom 60,000 sleep forever in the
fields of France and Flanders and in the plains of England, witnesses
the price this people of eight millions paid as its share in the task of
freeing the world from tyranny.

The realization that in a world war not merely the men in the trenches
but the whole nation could and must be counted as part of the fighting
force was slow in coming in Canada as in other democratic and unwarlike
lands. Slowly the industry of the country was adjusted to a war basis.
When the conflict broke out, the country was pulling itself together
after the sudden collapse of the speculative boom of the preceding
decade. For a time men were content to hold their organization together
and to avert the slackening of trade and the spread of unemployment
which they feared. Then, as the industrial needs and opportunities of
the war became clear, they rallied. Field and factory vied in expansion,
and the Canadian contribution of food and munitions provided a very
substantial share of the Allies' needs. Exports increased threefold, and
the total trade was more than doubled as compared with the largest year
before the war.

The financing of the war and of the industrial expansion which
accompanied it was a heavy task. For years Canada had looked to Great
Britain for a large share alike of public and