To this was added, in later years, a feeling that some day Canadians might be called upon to take a part in the defense of the British Empire should it become engaged in a supreme struggle. This feeling developed during the South African War when Canada took over the last garrison duties from the Imperial forces as well as the naval stations at Halifax and Esquimalt. The obligation of contributing men to Imperial defense was admitted and discussed at the various Imperial Conferences between 1900 and 1914. Assisted by British experts, certain military and naval preparations had been made with the intention of meeting any national emergency and any imperial necessity which might arise. While these grave obligations may have rested lightly on the majority of the people engaged in agriculture, commerce, and railway building, the country was not mentally unprepared for the great call of August, 1914. This explains in part why the recruiting of her early battalions and the prompt dispatch of her first contingent of 33,000 men was so enthusiastically accomplished. Division followed division until in about fifteen months Canada had a fighting army corps in France. This accomplishment surprised herself not more than it surprised the Allies and the enemy. Canada's enlistment during the five years of activity totaled one-thirteenth of her population. Over four hundred thousand men, out of a population of about eight millions, actually crossed the ocean. Four divisions fought as such in France. Railway troops worked with every British Army, and forestry battalions did almost all the work of that nature required to supply the needs of both French and British forces on the western front. The casualties among Canadian troops were quite equal to those sustained by the more numerous armies of the United States, because of the greater duration of Canadian service. Such success as the Canadians had in fighting was due largely to inheritance and environment. Many of those who fought were of British birth or were English, Scotch, Irish, or Welsh once or twice removed. The military instincts of the British and French races had been preserved to a remarkable degree in the Dominion. Added to this was the energy, adaptability, and initiative developed in a people living in small communities scattered through the vast open spaces of a country almost equal in area to the whole of Europe. The pluck of the pioneer, the tenacity of the settler, the self-reliance of the rider of the plains, the initiative of the woodsman, the skill of the shantyman and the prospector--all these combined to give the Canadian army a quality second to none among those engaged in the Great World War.