The Canadians started no such work, but they were quick to adopt a policy of give and take.  It was the Canadians who began the trench raids for which the Germans have such a fierce distaste, and after they had learned something of how Fritz fought the Canadians took to paying him back in some of his own coin.  Not that they matched the deeds of the Huns—­only a Hun could do that.  But the Canadians were not eager to take prisoners.  They would bomb a dugout rather than take its occupants back.  And a dugout that has been bombed yields few living men!

Who shall blame them?  Not I—­nor any other man who knows what lessons in brutality and treachery the Canadians have had from the Hun.  It was the Canadians, near Ypres, who went through the first gas attack—­that fearful day when the Germans were closer to breaking through than they ever were before or since.  I shall not set down here all the tales I heard of the atrocities of the Huns.  Others have done that.  Men have written of that who have firsthand knowledge, as mine cannot be.  I know only what has been told to me, and there is little need of hearsay evidence.  There is evidence enough that any court would accept as hanging proof.  But this much it is right to say—­that no troops along the Western front have more to revenge than have the Canadians.

It is not the loss of comrades, dearly loved though they be, that breeds hatred among the soldiers.  That is a part of war, and always was.  The loss of friends and comrades may fire the blood.  It may lead men to risk their own lives in a desperate charge to get even.  But it is a pain that does not rankle and that does not fester like a sore that will not heal.  It is the tales the Canadians have to tell of sheer, depraved torture and brutality that has inflamed them to the pitch of hatred that they cherish.  It has seemed as if the Germans had a particular grudge against the Canadians.  And that, indeed, is known to be the case.  The Germans harbored many a fond illusion before the war.  They thought that Britain would not fight, first of all.

And then, when Britain did declare war, they thought they could speedily destroy her “contemptible little army.”  Ah, weel—­they did come near to destroying it!  But not until it had helped to balk them of their desire—­not until it had played its great and decisive part in ruining the plans the Hun had been making and perfecting for forty-four long years.  And not until it had served as a dyke behind which floods of men in the khaki of King George had had time to arm and drill to rush out to oppose the gray-green floods that had swept through helpless Belgium.

They had other illusions, beside that major one that helped to wreck them.  They thought there would be a rebellion and civil war in Ireland.  They took too seriously the troubles of the early summer of 1914, when Ulster and the South of Ireland were snapping and snarling at each other’s throats.  They looked for a new mutiny in India, which should keep Britain’s hands full.  They expected strikes at home.  But, above all, they were sure that the great, self-governing dependencies of Britain, that made up the mighty British Empire, would take no part in the fight.