immediately to their left across the highway, which were to move forward with them, were the Canadians. The news was not unwelcome to them; for the reputation of the Canadians as shock troops of the first order was already established. The road runs through the large semi-open wood where the whole Canadian army remained hidden during August 7th; with the falling of darkness they moved forward in the charge of guides to their appointed posts—the ground being quite unfamiliar to them. The plan of battle called for the advance at zero hour by the Canadians between the Amiens-Roye road and the Amiens-Ham railway, an initial front of 7,000 yards; on the left beyond the railway were the Australians and on the right across the road were the French. The dividing line of the highway was not rigidly observed. The 9th brigade, forming the extreme right of the Canadian force, delivered its attack from the right of the road and captured Rifle Wood—a daring and successful stroke well worth the telling which had much to do with the almost instantaneous success all along the line of the Canadian advance, and further along the road on the following day the Canadians stormed across the road in support of the French and taking the Germans on the flank and in reverse made possible a break through at one of the most obstinately defended points of the enemy front.

This was the first occasion upon which the Canadians met the enemy in open fighting; and the German expectation that troops experienced only in trench fighting would be at their mercy in field manoeuvres developed at once into a catastrophic disappointment. Of all the battlefields of the war the terrain here shows the least signs of conflict—due to the rapid retirement of the Germans once their front lines were smashed. From the highway most of the battlefield can be seen; and the story of the extraordinary advance of the Canadians by which a huge wedge was driven into the German front can be easily told by a competent guide—of which there never should be any lack. No Canadian making a pious pilgrimage over the Canadian front should overlook the Amiens battlefield. An eminent military authority has made the prediction that in the ultimate judgment of the historian of the tactical developments of the 1918 campaign, the complete smashing of the German defence at this point by the Canadian corps in the early hours of August 8, will be regarded as one of the decisive turning points of the campaign. It is worth noting, in this connection, that Berlin despatches, quoting from advance proofs of his book on the war, credit Ludendorff with the statement that the success of the Franco-British offensive at Amiens on August 8th destroyed the last hope of the Germans for final victory. The Canadians were the spear-head of that attack and made the deepest advance, on the opening day of the offensive, into the enemy's territory.

Within ten days the Canadian contribution to the Allied offensive in the Amiens sector was completed. On August 22, the decision was reached by the high command to shift the whole Canadian force north to Arras in preparation for the attack upon the Drocourt-Queant position; in the early hours of August 26—less than 100 hours later—the Canadians burst through the early morning mist upon the astonished Germans, who thought them fifty miles away, and wrested the high ground at Monchy le Preux and the positions in alignment with it from them. From this jumping-off place the Canadians advanced resolutely and steadily towards Cambrai; in a week's time the much vaunted Hindenburg line was behind them; towards the end of September, upon the very morning upon which the Germans planned the recovery of lost ground the Canadians forestalled them, pushed across the Canal du Nord and enveloped Bourlon Wood where the British advance a year earlier had been stayed; then driving forward across the Arras-Cambrai highway they put in jeopardy the German control of Cambrai, the pivot upon which the whole western German defence swung. There followed the desperate attempt by the Germans to save Cambrai by the recapture of Bourlon Wood; their failure involved the evacuation of the city and the undermining of the defensive lines to the south. At Cambrai the Canadians passed the crest of the hill—thereafter the "going" was rapid and comparatively easy to a goal already in sight. The capture of Valenciennes was an interesting incident in a widespread advance by the whole Allied front from the Meuse to the sea; and the last day of the war found the Canadians as the advance guard of the British forces victoriously encamped upon the very ground where in August, 1914, the Old Contemptibles—that immortal vanished army—first threw the British sword into the rapidly-rising scale in a determination, amply vindicated by legions animated by their example and inspired by their achievements who followed them, to right the balance. This completion of the full circle of British sacrifice in the last hours of the war by the troops of an overseas Dominion which, when the first shots were fired, had no military history and dreamed not of its aptitude for war is one of those profound historic coincidences which make an appeal, to be felt rather than expressed, to that sense of Destiny which in times of Fate takes possession of the human soul.