On March 10 the operations that were to develop into the battle of Neuve Chapelle and St. Eloi commenced. It was the beginning of the great offensive, which, so long looked for, was to fail so dismally owing to the need for shells, and the German use of poisonous gases. It resulted in the taking of two miles of German trenches, and the killing and capture of 8000 of the enemy. In this action our soldiers drove the enemy from their trenches, and after heavy losses resisted all attempts to evict them. All through the preceding night our troops had marched to their positions, and with the breaking of day our artillery began to bombard the German trenches. A hundred heavy guns spoke with one prolonged roar, the field guns joined in, the whole British artillery was concentrated upon the enemy. No trenches could stand such a destructive fire. Forty minutes later the advance began and the village of Neuve Chapelle was carried at the point of the bayonet. It was in the rush upon the trenches that the Middlesex, faced by unbroken barbed wire, were mown down in scores and hundreds. Helplessly they tore at the entanglement—in silence they died rather than retreat. Following that came the attack upon the German position, and in this advance were the 2nd Gordon Highlanders and their Territorial battalion the 6th. It was in this action that Lieutenant-Colonel Maclean of the 6th Gordons lost his life. To a subaltern who went to his assistance he said, “Thank you, and now, my boy, your place is not here. Go about your duty.” The battle of Neuve Chapelle was finely conceived, and more finely carried out. Most unfortunately, owing to the lack of reserves at the height of the engagement, the full force of the attack was spent too soon. The story of how the Canadians fought and died at the second battle of Ypres upon April 22, and how the comrade regiment of the Royal Highlanders brought immortal honour to the North, is a tale of four days’ heroism against unnatural and horrible odds. Mr. J. Huntley Skrine has written somewhere: Sons in my gates of the West, Where the long tides foam in the dark of the pine, And the cornlands crowd to the dim sky-line, And wide as the air are the meadows of kine, What cheer from my gates of the West? What indeed! Nothing less than death rather than defeat. Whatever the Canadians might be, they were not veteran soldiers. The Canadian Division numbered doctors, lawyers, farmers, with a sprinkling of men who had seen service in the South African War. Let us see how they faced the German onslaught.