World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Poetry
Among the British Armies, no troops have won higher distinction than
the Canadian Corps, under their great leader, Sir Arthur Currie. They
were ranked among the most formidable fighting units on the Western
Front, and as an offensive spear-head of shock troops they were
unsurpassed. They fought in almost every critical engagement of the
War. They "saved the day" at the second Battle of Ypres, in face of the
hideous emission of poison gas; they fought in the long-drawn agony of
the Somme; they won Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, and Passchendaele in 1917;
they were in the thickest of the battle in the last "hundred days", as
they fought triumphantly at Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, Valenciennes, and
Mons. The last blow struck before the Armistice was signed, was struck
by the Canadians, who entered Mons early on the morning of the eleventh
of November. The course of the war for the British Armies on the
Western Front was _from Mons_, where the "Old Contemptibles" were flung
into the furnace of the fight in August, 1914, _to Mons_, won by our
men from overseas in November, 1918. It was "a long, long way", a way
stained by blood and sweat, but at last the grim journey ended. Canada
has made a worthy contribution to world-freedom and world-brotherhood.
Canada is dearer to us than ever, because it has been purchased anew
at a great cost of precious blood. Those who have fallen are worthy of
everlasting remembrance. They will be commemorated by public monuments,
by tablets of bronze, or brass or marble in public buildings, by
"storied windows richly dight". They deserve this. But, before God,
they deserve at our hands a better monument--even the monument of
a purer, nobler Canada, more intelligent, more united, more sober,
more kindly, more God-fearing. Dying for Canada, they have recreated
Canada. Let us be worthy of those whose deaths have kept us free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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