In 1913 I went to South America to set up and run threshing outfits that had been sold to the ranchers by the Racine company I had been working for winters. I had a two years’ contract, and was supposed to go to Uruguay or the Argentine. If I had done that, probably things would have been all right. But at the last moment, as a result of some one else dropping out, I was sent to Rio Grande do Sul, in the southern “pan-handle” of Brazil. But don’t believe that because it was Brazil there were any Brazilians there, or leastways any that counted for anything. The Germans have been swarming into Rio Grande and Santa Catharina for thirty years, and to-day southern Brazil is as “Dutch” as--southern Wisconsin. Probably, in fact, it is more so, for there are over half a million Germans there, and hardly a third that many Brazilians. I had been avoiding German farms for the last two or three years, but in Rio Grande all the ranchers were Germans, and I had to go wherever an outfit had been sold anyhow. The notches multiplied pretty fast on my old monkey-wrench for about three weeks, but at the end of that time I found myself in jail for knocking out the front teeth of a fat German farmer after I had ducked a prod from his pitchfork. Our agent at Santa Catharina and the American Consul at Santos got me clear, but the former took the occasion to cancel my contract and ship me home before, as he put it, I had ruined the company’s trade in that end of Brazil. I was breaking prairie with a big gasoline tractor outfit in northern Manitoba when the European War started, and so sure I was that my country was going to take some kind of a stand against the invasion of Belgium that I got ready at once to go home and enlist in case we had to back up the protest with force. I waited, with my grip packed, until it was plain that there was no chance of any move from our brave statesmen at Washington--it must have been three or four weeks before I gave up hope--and then threw up my job, did sixty miles on horseback in nine hours to the railway station, and went to the nearest recruiting office. They would probably have taken me as an American, but I was taking no chances on being rejected. I told them I was an Irish-Canadian, and the next day was being put through the paces by the drill-sergeant. I could have got much more pay and a better billet generally by going into the transport service and driving a motor truck, but I had suddenly become aware that I had been nursing a sort of slumbering desire to kill Germans for the last decade, and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to let that desire wake up. I sewed an extra loop on my belt so that I could have my good old monkey-wrench always handy, and began looking anxiously forward to the time when I should be able to complete my “register” of bashed-up Dutchmen on the handle. I might have to use my rifle for long-range work, I told myself, but for the close-in action in the trenches I was