“The Canadians have wrested the trenches over the bodies of the dead and earned the right to stand side by side with the superb troops who, in the first battle of Ypres, broke and drove before them the flower of the Prussian Guards. Looked at from any point the performance would be remarkable. It is amazing to soldiers when the genesis and composition of the Canadian division are considered. It contained no doubt a sprinkling of South African veterans, but it consisted in the main of men who were admirable raw material, but who, at the outbreak of war, were neither disciplined nor trained as men count discipline and training in these days of scientific warfare. It was, it is true, commanded by a distinguished English general. Its staff was supplemented, without being replaced, by some brilliant British staff officers. But in its higher and regimental commands were to be found lawyers, college professors, business men and real estate agents, ready with cool self-confidence to do battle against an organization in which the study of military science is the exclusive pursuit of laborious lives. “With what devotion, with a valor how desperate, with resourcefulness how cool and how frightful, the amateur soldier of Canada confronted overwhelming odds, may perhaps be made clear, even by a narrative so incomplete as the present. “The salient of Ypres has become familiar to all students of the campaign in Flanders. Like all salients it was, and was known to be, a source of weakness to the forces holding it, but the reasons which have led to its retention are apparent, and need not be explained. “On Thursday, April 22, 1915, the Canadian division held a line of roughly five thousand yards, extending in a northwesterly direction from the Ypres-Roulers railway, to the Ypres-Poekapelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the French troops. The division consisted of three infantry brigades in addition to the artillery brigades. Of the infantry brigades the first was in reserve, the second was on the right, and the third established contact with the allies at the point indicated above. QUIET PRECEDING STORM