That was last August, and the Allies haven’t broken through yet. Eventually I believe they will break through, but, in my opinion, men who are waiting now to learn if they are to be drawn for service in our new American army will be veterans in Europe before the big break comes, which will wreck the Prussian hope of success in this war. And if we of the U. S. A. don’t throw in the weight to beat the Prussians now, they will not be beaten, and, in that case, the day will not be very far distant when we will have to beat them to save our homes and our nation. War is a dreadful and inglorious and ill-smelling and cruel thing. But if we hold back now, we will be in the logical position of a man hesitating to go to grips with a savage, shrieking, spewing maniac who has all but whipped his proper keepers, and is going after the on-looker next. We got drafts of recruits before we went on to the Somme, and some of our wounded men were sent back to England, where we had left our “Safety-first Battalion.” That was really the Fifty-first battalion, of the Fourth Division of the Canadian forces, composed of the physically rejected, men recovering from wounds, and men injured in training. The Tommies, however, called it the “Safety-first,” or “Major Gilday’s Light Infantry.” Major Gilday was our battalion surgeon. He was immensely popular, and he achieved a great name for himself. He made one realize what a great personal force a doctor can be and what an unnecessary and overwrought elaboration there is in the civil practice of medicine. Under Major Gilday’s administration, no man in our battalion was sick if he could walk, and, if he couldn’t walk, there was a reasonable suspicion that he was drunk. The Major simplified the practice of medicine to an exact science involving just two forms of treatment and two remedies--“Number Nines” and whale oil. Number Nines were pale, oval pills, which, if they had been eggs, would have run about eight to an omelette. They had an internal effect which could only be defined as dynamic. After our men had become acquainted with them through personal experience they stopped calling them “Number Nines” and called them “whiz-bangs.” There were only two possibilities of error under Major Gilday’s system of simplified medicine. One was to take a whiz-bang for trench feet, and the other to use whale oil externally for some form of digestional hesitancy. And, in either case, no permanent harm could result, while the error was as simple of correction as the command “about face.” There was a story among our fellows that an ambulance had to be called for Major Gilday, in London, one day, on account of shock following a remark made to him by a bobby. The Major asked the policeman how he could get to the Cavoy Hotel. The bobby, with the proper bus line in mind, replied: “Take a number nine, sir.”