ries has been a stronghold. An
ancient city, girdled at the outbreak of this gigantic war by a ring of
fortresses of modern construction, in which a complete battery of guns
was mounted; forts, let it be added, strategically placed, which could
sweep the country in all directions. Then, turning sharply round
Verdun, the line cut its way through muddy plains, through heights once
more, through miles of country, till it reached the Swiss frontier.
All along that line, fighting continued, here bursting out into a
violent conflict, simmering down elsewhere, and at times subsiding
altogether. Yet never were the trenches without a sinister line of
crouching men, whether British, Belgian, or French, and ever was there
another sinister, remorseless gang holding the German trenches opposite.

Round about the city of Reims there had raged at times most furious
fighting. In the Vosges, French riflemen and Germans contended for the
mastery without cessation; while in the Woevre, before St. Mihiel, at
Arras, in a thousand places, were desperate conflicts, in which the
line swayed, trenches were captured and recaptured, men died, and the
Kaiser's troops frantically struggled to break their way through the
cordon stretched before them. Along the British line the battle of
Neuve Chapelle gave opportunity to many a young soldier, and proved to
the Germans that British and Indians could fight heroically together.
Then the Second Battle of Ypres took place, a conflict more furious
than any that had gone before it, in which, making their preparations
secretly, throwing to the winds all thoughts of humanity, acting in
that ruthless, treacherous manner which one now associates as a natural
course with the Germans, the Kaiser and his staff deluged the French
and British lines--where they joined--with asphyxiating gas, which
choked hundreds. And yet, in spite of this diabolical manoeuvre, in
spite of the unpreparedness of the French and British, and though the
Algerian troops of the French, scared by the gas as by the mutterings
of a wizard, gave way and fell back, leaving a gap in the line, yet the
enemy failed to gain their object. For the 1st Canadian Division flung
itself across the gap and held on like heroes, fought with desperate
bravery indeed, and wrought for the people of the British Empire, and
for their brothers and sisters in Canada, a tale which, so long as the
British nation exists, will never be forgotten--never beaten.