When one of the first troop trains left Winnipeg, a handsome young giant belonging to the Seventy-ninth Highlanders said, as he swung himself up on the rear coach, “The only thing I am afraid of is that it will all be over before we get there.”  He was needlessly alarmed, poor lad!  He was in time for everything; Festubert, Saint-Eloi, Ypres; for the gas attacks before the days of gas-masks, for trench-fever, for the D.C.M.; and now, with but one leg, and blind, he is one of the happy warriors at St. Dunstan’s whose cheerfulness puts to shame those of us who are whole!

There were strange scenes at the station when those first trains went out.  The Canadians went out with a flourish, with cheers, with songs, with rousing music from the bands.  The serious men were the French and Belgian reservists, who, silently, carrying their bundles, passed through our city, with grim, determined faces.  They knew, and our boys did not know, to what they were going.  That is what made the difference in their manner.

The government of one of the provinces, in the early days of the war, shut down the public works, and, strange to say, left the bars open.  Their impulse was right—­but they shut down the wrong thing; it should have been the bars, of course.  They knew something should be shut down.  We are not blaming them; it was a panicky time.  People often, when they hear the honk of an automobile horn, jump back instead of forward.  And it all came right in time.

A moratorium was declared at once, which for the time being relieved people of their debts, for there was a strong feeling that the cup of sorrow was so full now that all movable trouble should be set off for another day!

The temperance people then asked, as a corresponding war measure, that the bars be closed.  They urged that the hearts of our people were already so burdened that they should be relieved of the trouble and sorrow which the liquor traffic inevitably brings.  “Perhaps,” they said to the government, “when a happier season comes, we may be able to bear it better; but we have so many worries now, relieve us of this one, over which you have control.”

Then the financial side of the liquor traffic began to pinch.  Manitoba was spending thirteen million dollars over the bars every year.  The whole Dominion’s drink bill was one hundred millions.  When the people began to rake and save to meet the patriotic needs, and to relieve the stress of unemployment, these great sums of money were thought of longingly—­and with the longing which is akin to pain!  The problem of unemployment was aggravated by the liquor evil and gave another argument for prohibition.

I heard a woman telling her troubles to a sympathetic friend one day, as we rode in an elevator.

“’E’s all right when ’e’s in work,” she said; “but when ’e’s hidle ’e’s something fierce:  ’e knocks me about crool.  ’E guzzles all the time ’e’s out of work.”