"My advisers request me to inform you that the people of Canada, through their Government, desire to offer one million bags of flour, of ninety-eight pounds each, as a gift to the people of the United Kingdom, to be placed at the disposal of his Majesty's Government, and to be used for such purposes as they may deem expedient." This munificent gift was accepted with deepest expressions of gratitude, and with the assurance that "we can never forget the generosity and promptitude of this gift and the patriotism from which it springs." Two hundred trains, of thirty cars each, were required to transport this flour, valued at $3,000,000, to the port whence it was shipped. Meanwhile, during the first few weeks after the call for men had been issued, hurried preparations were made to establish the training camps in which they were to be received and trained. Most notable of these mobilization centers was Valcartier Camp, ideally situated outside of Quebec. Under the direction of Captain William Price, Lieutenant Colonel E. H. Burstall, and Lieutenant Colonel W. McBain, extensive housing accommodations were erected, roads constructed, and all the improvements of a modern city were installed. One prominent feature was three miles of rifle butts for rifle practice. Here 33,000 recruits were gathered and housed before three months had passed. The training of the recruits in the Canadian mobilization camps was, for obvious reasons, only of the most elementary sort. First of all there was a dearth of competent instructors, which could be more plentifully supplied in England. And then there was the psychological factor; it was difficult to make the men realize the seriousness of military discipline on native soil, so distant as it was from the seat of war. Therefore the men were taught little more than how to march in proper formation before they were shipped to England, where they were to be more fully "licked into shape" in the Canadian training camps established there. Once on the other side, immersed in the tense war feeling which permeated the English people, almost within sound of the big guns which were already thundering close to the gates of Paris, the Canadian recruit came to a profound realization of the full significance of the situation and his responsibilities. Under these conditions he quickly relinquished the last vestige of that intense individualism so characteristic of the sons of pioneers, an excellent quality in a guerrilla fighter, but not so desirable in the units of a large fighting organization.