“Tell me, Jean,” I ask in the comfortable leisure of our voyage which conduces to pipe-smoking and conversation, “tell me, are you a Frenchman or an Englishman?” “Not the one, nor the other,” answers Jean in his old-fashioned _patois._ “M'sieu' knows I am French-Canadian.” A remarkable answer, when you come to think of it; for it claims a nationality which has never existed, and is not likely to exist, except in a dream. “Well, then,” I say, following my impulse of psychological curiosity, of which Jean is sublimely ignorant, “suppose a war should come between France and England. On which side would you fight?” Jean knocks the dottle out of his pipe, refills and relights. Then, between the even strokes of his paddle, he makes this extraordinary reply: _“M'sieu, I suppose my body would march under the flag of England. But my heart would march under the flag of France.”_ Good old Jean Morel! You had no premonition of this glorious war in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and Stripes would join them. How should you know anything about it? Your log cabin was your capitol. Your little family was your council of state. Even the rest of us, proud of our university culture, were too blind, in those late Victorian days, to see the looming menace of Prussian paganism and the conquer-lust of the Hohenzollerns, which has plunged the whole world in war. II OXFORD February, 1917 The “Schools” building, though modern, is one of the stateliest on the Main Street. Here, in old peaceful times, the university examinations used to be held. Now it is transformed into a hospital for the wounded men from the fighting front of freedom. Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford. “Come,” he says, “I want you to see an example of the Carrel treatment of wounds.” The patient is sitting up in bed--a fine young fellow about twenty years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars. The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow of his right arm, not yet out of danger. “Does it hurt,” I ask. “Not much,” he answers, trying to smile, “at least not too much, M'sieu'.” The accent of French Canada is unmistakable. I talk to him in his own dialect. “What part of Quebec do you come from?” “From _Trois Rivieres,_ M'sieu', or rather from a country back of that, the Saint Maurice River.” “I know it well--often hunted there. But what made you go to the war?” “I heard that England fought to save France from the damned Germans. That was enough, M'sieu', to make me march. Besides, I always liked to fight.” “What did you do before you became a soldier?” “I was a lumberjack.”