ltogether constituted such a dramatic and realistic representation of
actual fighting that the whole line burst into a very unsoldierly but
very hearty applause, which, however, the sergeant major immediately and
sternly checked.

"What do you think of that?" enquired the major. "Isn't he a scream?"

"He is perfectly magnificent," said Barry, "and, after all, he is right
in his psychology. There is no possibility of training men to fight,
without putting the 'aight into it!'"

CHAPTER XIV

A TOUCH OF WAR

The period of intensive training was drawing to a close. The finishing
touches in the various departments that had come to be considered
necessary in modern warfare had been given. With the "putting on the
lacquer" the fighting spirit of the men had been sharpened to its
keenest edge. They were all waiting impatiently for the order to "go
up." The motives underlying that ardour of spirit varied with the
temperament, disposition and education of the soldier. There were those
who were eager to "go up" to prove themselves in that deadly struggle
where their fellow Canadians had already won their right to stand as
comrades in arms with the most famous fighting battalions of the British
army. Others, again, there were in whose heart burned a deep passion to
get into grips with those hellish fiends whose cruelties, practised upon
defenceless women and children in that very district where they were
camped, and upon wounded Canadians, had stirred Canada from Vancouver to
Halifax with a desire for revenge.

But, with the great majority there was little of the desire either for
military glory or for revenge. Their country had laid upon them a duty
for the discharge of which they had been preparing themselves for many
months, and that duty they were ready to perform. More than that, they
were eager to get at it and get done with it, no matter at what cost.
With all this, too, there was an underlying curiosity as to what the
thing would be like "up there." Far down below all their feelings
there lay an unanswered interrogation which no man dared to put to his
comrade, and which indeed few men put to themselves. That interrogation
was: "How shall I stand up under the test?"

The camp was overrun with rumours from returning battalions of the
appalling horrors of the front line. Ever since that fateful 22nd of
April, 1915, that day of tragedy and of glory for the Canadian army, and
for the Canadian people, the Ypres sal