last the hour came when he was free to follow the imperative call of
patriotic duty. He went to Ottawa, saw Sir Sam Hughes, and was offered a
commission in the Canadian Field Artillery on the completion of his
training at the Royal Military College, at Kingston, Ontario. The last
weeks of his training were passed at the military camp of Petewawa on
the Ottawa River. There his family was able to meet him in the July of
1916. While we were with him he was selected, with twenty-four other
officers, for immediate service in France; and at the same time his two
younger brothers enlisted in the Naval Patrol, then being recruited in
Canada by Commander Armstrong.

The letters in this volume commence with his departure from Ottawa. Week
by week they have come, with occasional interruptions; mud stained
epistles, written in pencil, in dug-outs by the light of a single
candle, in the brief moments snatched from hard and perilous duties.
They give no hint of where he was on the far-flung battle-line. We know
now that he was at Albert, at Thiepval, at Courcelette, and at the
taking of the Regina trench, where, unknown to him, one of his cousins
fell in the heroic charge of the Canadian infantry. His constant
thoughtfulness for those who were left at home is manifest in all he
writes. It has been expressed also in other ways, dear and precious to
remember: in flowers delivered by his order from the battlefield each
Sabbath morning at our house in Newark, in cables of birthday
congratulations, which arrived on the exact date. Nothing has been
forgotten that could alleviate the loneliness of our separation, or
stimulate our courage, or make us conscious of the unbroken bond of
love.

The general point of view in these letters is, I think, adequately
expressed in the phrase "_Carry On_," which I have used as the title of