FROM THE VOSGES MOUNTAINS TO YPRES Map showing the Northeastern frontiers of France, and neutral Belgium through which the German armies poured in 1914. The battle line held straight from Belfort to Verdun, with the exception of the St. Mihiel salient. Above Verdun the line veered to the west, north of Rheims, marking a wide curve toward St. Quentin and Arras and bending back to Ypres, held by the Caradians throughout the war. of 1,612 officers, 1,994 nursing sisters and 12,382 of other ranks, or a total of about 16,000. This will give some conception of the importance of the task involved in the caring for the sick and wounded of about 90,000 fighting troops, some 60,000 auxiliary troops behind the lines and the reserve depots in England. The work of the Canadian Red Cross Society included the building and equipping of auxiliary hospitals to those of the Canadian Army Medical Corps; providing of extra and emergency stores of all kinds, recreation huts, ambulances and lorries, drugs, serums and surgical equipment calculated to make hospitals more efficient; the looking after the comfort of patients in hospitals providing recreation and entertainment to the wounded, and dispatching regularly to every Canadian prisoner parcels of food, as well as clothes, books and other necessaries: The Canadian Red Cross expended on goods for prisoners in 1917 nearly $600,000. In all the Canadian Red Cross distributed since the beginning of the war to November 23, 1918, $7,631,100. The approximate total of voluntary contributions from Canada for war purposes was over $90,000,000. The following figures quoted from tables issued by the Department of Public Information at Ottawa, show the exports in certain Canadian commodities, having a direct bearing on the war for the last three fiscal years before the war (1912-13-14), and for the last fiscal year (1918); and illustrates the increase, during this period, in the value of these articles exported: As practically all of the increase of food and other materials went to Great Britain, France and Italy, the extent of Canada's effort in upholding the allied cause is clearly evident and was by no means a small one. The trade of Canada for 1914 was one billion dollars; for the fiscal year of 1917-18 it was two and one-half billion dollars. Approximately 60,000,000 shells were made in Canada during the war. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities a shell com mittee was formed in Canada to really act as an agent for the British war office in placing contracts. The first shells were shipped in December, 1914, and by the end of May, 1915, approximately 400 establishments were manufacturing shells in Canada. By November, 1915, orders had been placed by the Imperial Government to the value of $300,000,000, and an Imperial Munitions Board, replacing the shell committee, was formed, directly responsible to the Imperial Ministry of Munitions. 1 During the war period Canada purchased from her bank savings $1,669,381,000 of Canadian war loans. Estimates of expenditures for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1919, demonstrated the thoroughness with which Canada went to war. They follow: F CHAPTER XXVI IMMORTAL VERDUN RANCE was revealed to herself, to Germany and to the world as the heroic defender of civilization, as a defender defying death in the victory of Verdun. There, with the gateway to Paris lying open at its back, the French army, in the longest pitched battle in all history, held like a cold blue rock against the uttermost man power and resources of the German army. General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff and military dictator of the Teutonic allies, there met disaster and disgrace. There the mettle of the Crown Prince was tested and he was found to be merely a thing of straw, a weak creature whose mind was under the domination of von Falkenhayn. For the tremendous offensive which was planned to end the war by one terrific thrust, von Falkenhayn had robbed all the other fronts of effective men and munitions. Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his crafty Chief of Staff, General Ludendorf, had planned a campaign against Russia designed to put that tottering military Colossus out of the war. The plans were upon a scale that might well have proved successful. The Kaiser, influenced by the Crown Prince and by von Falkenhayn, decreed that the Russian campaign must be postponed and that von Hindenburg must send his crack troops to join the army of the Crown Prince fronting Verdun. Ludendorf promptly resigned as Chief of Staff to von Hindenburg and suggested that the Field Marshal also resign. That grim old warrior declined to take this action, preferring to remain idle in East Prussia and watch what he predicted would be a useless effort on the western front. His warning to the General Staff was explicit, but von Falkenhayn coolly ignored the message. Why did Germany select this particular point for its grand offensive? The answer is to be found in a demand made by the great Junker associations of Germany in May, 1915, nine months |