The officer spoke modestly as all British heroes do; but no words could convey a full idea of the desperate character of the fighting on that moonlight night. The Canadians knew perfectly well what depended upon them in that frantic struggle round about the poor battered town of Ypres; and they nobly performed the duty laid upon them. Remember that these men were not fighting, directly at least, for the safety of their own homes, which were thousands of miles away in peaceful Canada; nor for their wives and children, mothers, or sweethearts, who had sent them out so bravely from their homes in the western land. They might have stayed at home, and no one would have had any right to call them slackers or shirkers. But they did not stay at home. The “Old Grey Mother” of them all was in danger--the Britain to whom it was their pride to belong. So they came racing across the seas as quick as steam could bring them; and after some months of training in the Old Country, they went out to fight and win and die. THE CANADIAN SPIRIT When the Canadian troops arrived at the Western Front Sir John French wrote of them, “The soldierly bearing and the steadiness with which the men stay in the ranks on a bleak, cold, and snowy day are most remarkable.” Other leaders spoke of their high spirits and love of fun; others again of their cleverness in finding out new ways of doing things, and, later, of tricking the enemy. The men from overseas soon became comrades with the Britons from the Motherland. “The British Tommy,” wrote a young Canadian, “is splendid. He is alive to his fingertips. He is full of devices to deceive the enemy; he knows all kinds of tricks; he hasn’t a mean streak in him, and he’s a first-class fighting man. He uses his brains. It has been a revelation to me to find him as he really is.” Briton and Canadian, therefore, were prepared to think the best of each other; and the feeling of brotherliness with which they began their stern work carried them shoulder to shoulder through many a terrible day and yet more terrible night. The Canadians, after their custom, treated their officers in a free-and-easy manner which seemed at first somewhat strange to the ordinary British soldier. But when the time for duty came there was no difference between Canadian and British discipline. But there was always a standing dispute among Canadian officers and men in the heat of action as to who should go first into the stiffest part of the fight. At one battle a Canadian captain was leading his men in single file through a dangerous place, when a non-commissioned officer stepped forward and said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but bomb-throwers always go first.” Then he ran on ahead before the officer could speak to order him to go back.