was when I came to the guns on our return that I felt an awe which I
wanted to translate into appreciation. They were firing slowly now or
not firing at all, and the idle gunners were lounging about. They had
not seen their own curtain of fire or the infantry charge; they had been
as detached from the action as the crew of a battleship turret. It was
their accuracy and their cooerdination with the infantry and the
infantry's cooerdination with the barrage that had expressed better than
volumes of reports the possibilities of the offensive with waves of men
advancing behind waves of shell fire, which was applied in the taking of
Douaumont later and must be the solution of the problem of a decision
on the Western front.

Above the communication trenches the steel helmets of the British and
the gray fatigue caps of German prisoners were bobbing toward the rear
and at the casualty clearing station the doctor said, "Very light!" in
answer to the question about losses. The prisoners were in unusually
good fettle even for men safe out of shell fire; many had no chalk on
their clothes to indicate a struggle. They had been sitting in their
dugouts and walked out when an Englishman appeared at the door. Yes,
they said that they had been caught just before relief, and the relief
had been carried out in an unexpected fashion. If they must be taken
they, too, liked the patent barrage.

"I'll let you know when there's to be another show," said Howell, as we
parted at corps headquarters; but none could ever surpass this one in
its success or its opportunity of intimate observation.

This was the last time I saw him. A few days later, on one of his tours
to study the ground for an attack, he was killed by a shell. Army custom
permits the mention of his name because he is dead. He was a steadfast
friend, an able soldier, an upright, kindly, high-minded gentleman; and
when I was asked, not by the lady who had never kept up her interest so
long in anything as in this war, but by another, if living at the front
is a big strain, the answer is in the word that comes that a man whom
you have just seen in the fulness of life and strength is gone.

XXV

CANADA IS STUBBORN

What is Canada fighting for?--The Kaiser has brought Canadians
together--The land of immense distances--Canada's unfaltering
spirit--Canada our nearest neighbor geographically and
sentimentally--Ypres salient mud--Canadians invented the trench
raid