On the night of April twenty-second, General Alderson and his officers saw
that the situation was desperate. They thought to save their men. The
general sent up the command: "Retire!"

The word first reached the Little Black Devils. The men heard it, the
officers heard it, and they looked over the flattened parapet of their
trench. They saw the oncoming hordes of brutes in a hellish-looking garb,
and they sent back the answer: "Retire be damned!"

The general, the officers, rested content. With a spirit such as these men
showed even against desperate odds, nothing but victory could result.

The gas and the attacking waves of men poured on. We were not frightened.
No; none of us showed fear. Warfare such as this does not scare men with
red blood in their veins. The Germans judge others by themselves. A German
can be scared, a German can be bluffed. They thought that we were of the
same mettle, or lesser. At the Somme we put over on the enemy the only new
thing that we have been able to spring during the whole three years--the
tanks. Were they scared? They were terrified! They dropped rifles,
bayonets, knapsacks, everything--and ran. Had not our tanks stuck in the
awful mud of France, or had they a trifle more speed, I believe it might
have been possible for us to have reached Berlin by this time.

It was because we could not be frightened that General French, then
Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, cabled across the
world on the morning of the twenty-third of April, "The Canadians
undoubtedly saved the situation."

No word of definite praise, no eulogy, no encomiums. Just six words--"The
Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation."