CANADA’S CONTRIBUTION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20993, 21 December 1939, Page 6

CANADA’S CONTRIBUTION

Secretly and with perfect organisation, Canada’s first contingent of soldiers has been transported safely to Britain and is now receiving the final training before joining the British Army in France or wherever strength may be required. The King has extended a message that “the British Army will be proud to have as comrades in arms the successors of those men from Canada in the last war who fought with heroism never to be forgotten." With the movement of this armj across the seas to fight in the Empire’s cause, memories come flooding back of the great exploits of Canada’s men in the last war—of Vimy Ridge and other occasions when France as well as Britain had cause to be thankful for the patriotism and the courage of a great and rising Dominion on the other side of the Atlantic. Canada’s first contribution of fighting men is but the forerunner of similar crusades from the four corners of the world. New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the smaller colonies are pouring their men and their wealth into the common pool of the Allies’ fighting strength. As the morale of the centre of the Empire is improved and strengthened by this support, the enemy’s position is correspondingly weakened. Germany has clung in vain to the desperate hope that the Dominions would not answer Britain’s call, or if they did, German submarines and aeroplanes would prevent the great migration of fighting men. That hope must be fading from the minds of the Nazi High Command. Their most ruthless efforts must fail to prevent this great gathering of the Empire’s war strength. Those who have experienced the call and the response in this war and the last cannot fail to be impressed by the change that has come over the scene; but that change bodes ill for Germany. There is not the same light-hearted enthusiasm on this occasion as when the first men sailed to take part in the last war, contemptuous of an inferior enemy and fired with the determination to crush him quickly. There is rather a grim realisation of the responsibility thrust upon the Al'ies of defending the world against the of a powerful tyrant. The Empire’s war strength is being assembled deliberately and efficiently, not, with a love for war but with an unwavering determination to win and a certainty of eventual victory.