eld, of
which two-thirds were born in Great Britain. We have somewhere about
nine million people in Canada; we should get 12 per cent. of that
number under a system of national service, that is nearly 1,100,000
men. They say we have recruited about 300,000 for service abroad. It
isn't as if the rest were mobilized for war purposes--they are not.
There is not even a home guard. There are tens of thousands of men
around the streets of Toronto to-day who should be at war; I know a
lot of them personally and they haven't 'bad hearts' either, or
dependent mothers. They are just rotters, nothing else."

"Some of them who work for Red Cross one day in six months, throw out
their chests and tell you they are 'doing their bit' at home. I saw
red all the time I was back and a lot of them felt very uneasy when
they met me. When I see these chaps here tramping in and out of the
trenches day after day and think of those spineless blighters at home
it makes me sick."

"Ottawa has no backbone. It hasn't nerve enough to do anything. Quebec
holds the whip hand and Quebec is anti-war. And so the political game
goes on while Canadian profiteers make barrels of money--blood
money--out of munitions and food-stuffs. We make the most of what we
have done but I believe that Canada's effort is a disgrace."

"Well what would you have?" questioned the Colonel, "Canada has to
produce food for the Allies; she has to carry on; she could easily be
ruined by conscripting all her men for active service."

"Nobody suggests that all her men be conscripted for active service,"
said the Doc. "What is needed is that every man should be working for
the Empire. Whether it is in growing wheat, making munitions or
fighting, makes little difference. We need everybody working for the
common cause. There are plenty of men trying to sell real estate
to-day who should be out ploughing land for wheat to keep French and
British soldiers fit; there are lots of chaps who cannot fight or
plough who can run a lathe in a munitions factory; there are plenty of
women who could replace men on farms; every woman and man in France
is working. Why should not Canada be doing the same?"

"Its quite a bit different," argued the Cap., with a wink at the
Colonel. "After all if Germany won out it wouldn't make much
difference to Canada."

"Wouldn't it?" demanded the Doc, hotly. "That is what a relative of
mine said and I am only waiting for an opportunity to see the swine
and