Thus raged the Great War. How many took part it is difficult to estimate. Among the war tales of the past the most stupendous army on record is that of Xerxes, said by Herodotus to number 2,317,600 men, who marched from Asia to face defeat in the diminutive land of Greece. How large this fabulously great army really was we shall never know, but even at the figures given it was dwarfed by the hosts in arms in the Great European War, in which between four and five million men fought with fierceness unsurpassed. The field of action of this mighty contest was not confined to Europe. On the far-off border of Asia another Power, the warlike empire of Japan, sent forth its soldiers to drive the Germans from China. In Africa and on the South Pacific the colonists of Britain set other forces in motion to invade the German colonial regions. From British India sailed a strong array of dark-skinned warriors to take part in the war in France. From Algeria and Senegal came hordes of sable recruits for the French army, and from the cities and provinces of the Dominion of Canada came still another army of ardent patriots eager to aid the forces of their fatherland. We may well speak of the contest as not one of a continent but of the entire world. HOW CANADA PREPARED FOR WAR The story of the patriotic ardor of the Canadians is of interest, as given by a correspondent of the London GRAPHIC, who passed through the Dominion after the opening of the war. “The news of the great war came like a bolt from the blue. The effect was startling. The ordinary flow of Canadian life was suddenly arrested. The customary routine seemed to stop dead still. The whole of Canadian thought and much of the people’s energy were switched on to the great staggering fact that Europe was at war, and the old country fighting for its life. A most wonderful and touching patriotism welled up in the heart of the Canadians. The air became electric with excitement and enthusiasm. The prairie was indeed on fire. Passing through English towns on my journey to London the calm and peaceful demeanor of the people and the even flow of life seemed in strange contrast with the land I had just left, where the population was throbbing with loyal passion, and the war dominated the existence of the inhabitants, high and low, from Victoria to Halifax. One Canadian scene that remains impressed upon my mind was the sea of upturned faces in front of the offices of the Calgary News Telegram—every ear straining to the point where the war news was announced at intervals through a megaphone.