"The self-governing British colonies," wrote Bernhardi before the war, "have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theater of war." This contemptuous forecast might have been justified had German expectations of a short war been fulfilled. Though large and increasing sums had in recent years been spent on the Canadian militia and on a small permanent force, the work of building up an army on the scale the war demanded had virtually to be begun from the foundation. It was pushed ahead with vigor, under the direction, for the first three years, of the Minister of Militia, General Sir Sam Hughes. Many mistakes were made. Complaints of waste in supply departments and of slackness of discipline among the troops were rife in the early months. But the work went on; and when the testing time came, Canada's civilian soldiers held their own with any veterans on either side the long line of trenches. It was in April, 1915, at the second battle of Ypres--or, as it is more often termed in Canada, St. Julien or Langemarck--that the quality of the men of the first contingent was blazoned forth. The Germans had launched a determined attack on the junction of the French and Canadian forces, seeking to drive through to Calais. The use, for the first time, of asphyxiating gases drove back in confusion the French colonial troops on the left of the Canadians. Attacked and outflanked by a German army of 150,000 men, four Canadian brigades, immensely inferior in heavy artillery and tortured by the poisonous fumes, filled the gap, hanging on doggedly day and night until reenforcements came and Calais was saved. In sober retrospection it was almost incredible that the thin khaki line had held against the overwhelming odds which faced it. A few weeks later, at Givenchy and Festubert, in the same bloody salient of Ypres, the Canadian division displayed equal courage with hardly equal success. In the spring of 1916, when the Canadian forces grew first to three and then to four divisions, heavy toll was taken at St. Eloi and Sanctuary Wood. When they were shifted from the Ypres sector to the Somme, the dashing success at Courcelette showed them as efficient in offense as in defense. In 1917 a Canadian general, Sir Arthur Currie, three years before only a business man of Vancouver, took command of the Canadian troops. The capture of Vimy Ridge, key to the whole Arras position, after months of careful preparation, the hard-fought struggle for Lens, and toward the close of the year the winning of the Passchendaele Ridge, at heavy cost, were instances of the increasing scale and importance of the operations entrusted to Currie's men.