So ------------ HE N\ By \ \ ARTHUR STRINGER STRANGER, { it i - "Would you mind stoppin a moment or two, where n see i wider than - usual?" requested the stranger, in a somewhat abstracted tong of voice, "You can see pretty far, from this point." ventured the slightly perplexed lardy, as the car came to a stop. i | the wistful-eved stranger at his side. { "I wonder if you are seeing far enough i to see this Canada of yours as I see it now, this land of beauty that was born { for glory, if only you and the men of your time could fathom its promise? I ask this because vou have spoken of the need of sacrifice, when your only { peed is a need of vision. For I see | something more than a land of stately {rivers and statlier plains. | something more than { bors and ountless leagues of wheal- {land threaded wiph steel and fat {farms and proud and stately cities { where little more than a generation | ago the wilderness lay. lonely figures of Cabot and Cartier | and Champlain threading its waler- | ways, and re Verendrye and Radisson { and Mackenzie, with wonder in their | eyes, pushing deeper and deeper into | the solitude a mystery of «its | prairies. I see a country that stretches half a world away, linking the Atlantic i with the Pacific, a country in which the Roman Empire at its loftiest | might easily be lost, numbing the mind | with its magnitude, thrilling the very j soul with its vistas of material splendor. But I see more than this. IL see a nation purified by suffering | { and left nobler by loss, the loss of her | happy dead wha gave up their lives {for an Idea, and an Idea which others must transmute into an Ideal. 1 see a people who have endured the test {of disaster without flinching now facing the keener test of success, a nation that stood shoulder to shoulder ! '1 wonder if yow can?' murmured see | crowded har- | see the! 4 a S------------ {In a way, I had nothing wh do with his going. about having given my son for the icause, 1 know I'm only trying to cover up the old wound and salve the old ache." 1 had nothing to do with the giving. He gave himself! Hardy sat gazing down into valley ane with smoke and crowned with the dust of traffic. He was a reticent man, and it was not often he was prompted to speak of i these things. | "But to die, gictoriwus, on the field { of honor, to go gloriously, in the hour tof triumph," the man beside him was | saying, in a slightly tremulous, voice. the 1 Hardy, without Jooking up, felt { the rapt eyes searching his face. "That's just the point," he finally said, as though afraid of an emotion which he dare not explore too deeply. So he spoke with an assumption of coolheadedness to which he could lay faint claim. "It nhight ave been different, if my boy had given:up his life at white heat, in one of those big ushes. It wouldn't have seemed so fara, if he'd gone out giving those Huns what they deserved. But the way he did die seems so meaningless, so accidental, so damnably unneces- sary, that I can't help getting bitter, now and then, when I {all to thinking about it." "Then how did he die?" "Do you happen to know anything about warfare? ! En "1 have known warfare, in my time,' admitted the other, as though speak- ing to himself, and only to himsell. 'Well, this modern kind of cam- paigning is a good deal different to the brand of fighting of even twenly years ago. You see, when you win a battle nowadays you can't call it actually won until the moppers- before peril now called on to stand shoulder to shoulder before obliga-| tion. For I see its heroes to be re-| warded, its wounded to be succoured, | its homes to be builded, its ships to go voyaging forth into hungrier lands with the bread of life, its valleys of | { virgin loam to be opened up to its! {sons of adventure. f see it striving to weave its children up into the i fabric/of nationhood, I see it begging | | to make them partners in a prosperity | which is their own if they will only accept it. I see it with its great tasks] still uncompleted, asking, as I have! said, not for sacrifice but for vision, | proclaiming not its poverty but its { right to reap the fruits of victory!" | | The eyes of the two men met, and | {still again that vague sense of un- | easiness touched with humility took } possession of the hard-headed man of | | business as he stared at the stranger! {with the light, of exaltation on his! colorless face. Hardy even sat speechless for a moment or two, with his hand on the wheel of his car. * | finished, an up have gone over the territory and hd it up, rooted out the hidden snipers and taken care of the mud- crawlers who cut loose and stab in the dark. It means consolidating your pesition. It's really getting your triumph organized so it can't turn turtle into a defeat. And it's something that it doesn't pay to overlook." "I. think I understand," acknow- ledged his grave-eyed companion. 4 haven't been able to find out a great deal about that particular movement," Hafdy went on, "but they'd carried a salient and had been too busy to send in a mopping-up party. They thought the thing was that boy of mine was helping with the wounded, when he ran across a Prussian officer. That huli of hate was lying there, like a dog with rabies, with an automatic under his belly. When my boy stooped down, to give him first aid, that overlooked mass of hate turned and shot him through the stomach, | shot him abominably, uselessly!" tp | atever to | calling on you to organize a victory | next year or two own paid for in blood, and dearly paid for, so that peril may up on yo in the dark. cool-headed pride in this brotherhood Canada. It is the time for the last move, the {ime for the mopping-up, as you have called it, the time toshow the world that you have won what yo blind luck, but by strength of will and cleanness of mind. And Oh, sir, if you can but see these things as I see them, who am an older and wiser man than you are, I can devoutly and gratefully say to you that the son you have loved and lost has nol died in vain!" Hardy turned and regarded the stranger with the faded air, so sug- gestive of old daguerreotypes. The earnestness of the man, the sheer ersistence of the man, as he followed him like a shadow from his car even into his private office, Loth nettled and amazed the owner of "The Works who remembered that he had a busy day ahead of him. But he remem- bered other things as well, as he dropped into his swivel-chair before the rosewood desk that stood so a battleship cleared for action. It was a place of encounter, that desk, as definite a point of combat as the squared ring of pugilists. And when the owner of it looked up at the wist- ful figure beyond the square of rose- wood,\ it was almost with a challenge in his eyes. He was moved and a little bewildered, stirred by powers which he could not quite decipher. But he was a practical man, and mystery was not admitted into his scheme of things. "Theres just one thing I'd like to know," he egan with a laboriously achieved bruskness of tone, 'and that's why you're coming to me wit this love-of-country talk. I thought I'd been getting enough of that from the people I know around here, this last few days. But I don't compre- hend what brought pou into the chorus!" "It was the need, the need that could nol be denied, which brought me," was the deliberate and un- ruffled reply. "And what: persuaded you of that?" demanded the man of business. But he let his eyes fall before the oddly luminous stare of the faded figure on the far side of the room. "I can only remind you that an enemy of mine, who is now my com- rade, once said; Debout les morts!" "You'll have to pardon me for not juite understanding." not reappeat in your path and disaster may not slink It is ealling on you, not for a renewal of those earlier hot-blooded sacrifices, but for of men and races that is known as have won, not by brute passion and| 1 grimly bald and plain, like the deck of | i just as well as I And when talk | so that the fruits of it may be your| do; our hoys to he taken care of, the 1 It is calling on vou to con-|broken lads to get their patchi solidate a position which has been] and the sturdy ones to get their land ap settlements. Then we've got, a big Slice of Europe to feed and furnish, and to unjoad the stuff from your factory here and your farm out yonder we've got lo give her credit. And we've got to do it before the other fellow beats us to it and takes that trade from under our nose. You know that better than I do. We've got to have ships, and we've got to have grain-cars and houses and hospita s. We've ardy stopped him with a quick gesture which only his smile kept from eng peremptory. "You certainly don't need to go over that 'again, Major," he said as he leaned back in his chair. "I under stand those things. And [I also understand. that I promised to give ! you a decision this morning. Well, { I'm not going to give it to you right { now. 'Ive made yo? do a consider- able amount of waiting, and now I'm oing to make you wait just a little onger. For | want you to step out into what they call our Chin Quad and get what I've got to say ut this Loan business there!" John Hardy watched his visitor pass out through the door, smiling | at the other's slight frown of per- | plexity. He sat for several minu {deep in thought. Then he lean forward and touched a buzzer-button on the end of his desk. "Wilson," he said, as his secretary stepped into the room; "I want you to tell the department-heads to have the hoys come out into the Chin | Quad, the whole bunch of them. I | want them there right away." { In an incredibly short space of time {a soft-pedal seemed to fall on that | noisy key-board of industry. Ma | chinery droned off into silence, pul | loys grew still, carriers came to rest. | There was a scattering tidal-wave of { bare-armed workmen out into the { clear October sunlight between the | Ivy-draped walls, They met and { merged in the green-swarded quad- | rangle with the bare little wooden i platform at one end. About this | platform they sat and squatted on | the grass in semicircular rows, easily, without constraint, not unlike' Tom- mies at a rest-camp sing-sing, some of them even smoking. It was | plainly, an old story with them. The { only novelty lay in the untowardness { of the hour they were foregathering there. ' { There was not even a stir, much | less a cheer, as the Chief, bareheaded | and squinting a little from the strong | sunlig) t. mounted the platform. He ~ i stood looking at them for a moment or | two, apparently his { thoughts. And 'then he began to speak. - collecting a ---------- -- "Men," he said in a clear snd vie ant voice that was new to them an : even to himself, "men, I'm not much of a talker, and you know it. But "And what's all this to me?" he; His voice trailed off, and for only | Where the need is great," mur}, | demanded, bul of that prolonging | a second or two he sat inert. Then |mured the other, "even; they come | silence, perplexed by, the difficulty | he pulled himself together, grasped |back. : {with which his ghosfly resentments | his gearshift, and let in his clutch. | A gesture ;more of frustration than ' HERE was a shout of alarm, a scream of brakes hard down, and a cloud of dust as the heavy motor-car slithered to a stop. "1 hit "em!" gasped John Hardy, with a shake in his knees as he sat gripping the wheel and staring back over his shoulder. Then, with a sinking of the midriff, he leaned over the car-side and looked at his running-board. He looked at it as though he expected to see shreds of flesh hanging from its metalled edges. But he could see nothing, nothing on the running-board and nothing on the road itself. Yet something was wrong withhis eyes or with his nerves, that morning, for he had misjudged both his speed and his distances as that strange looking vehicle had come with ghost-like quietness about the turn in the road. The whole thing, indeed, had struck him as a bit fantastic, as a bit incredible, like a spectacle carpentered together for a motion- picture camera; the sombre grey team with their sombre trap- pings, the ancient-looking barouche with the two cockaded figures on the driving-seat, the solitary passenger in his solemn- looking military cape and the three-cornered black hat that shadowed a grey face with a far-away look in the eyes. It puzzled John Hardy. His Klaxon-horn had, apparently, been unheard, just as his shout had been ignored, And<the fools had 'turned out to the left, instead of to the right. So as he ducked for his emergency-hrake and stiffened in his seat he knew that the collision was inevitable. He had not actually seen it, misted as his vision must have been with road-dust and sudden panic. "But as he sat grey-jowled and shaken, waiting for the * Unknown to di feat his eye fell on a brown pocketbook within ten feet of his car, He clambered down from his seat ' intimidating before the sustained, and picked it up. Instead of being a unruffled dignity of thoystia r who etbook, however, it was a much-| had obviously suffered hore than he umbed volume of faded caif-skin. : But he up (the faded] ** wld that packed y th Romy of Co 10 see a 'th which still b he wond. iroad. . was the same Agure. at he had Be Sr Te And Hardy's sense of sisted, even when they were back De on Souls Sh Th sans © even oo s nupassive ure. at his side. en you're not an acter, after he | all?" he finally ventured, more humble ust | than he had intended to be. ; an stop. slightly 3 actor. am an observer now, nothing more." "You're luck: that, «n di ike th "No,.I am not an { d to have time for ] be a hard one! And sticking to the gb unl it was finished, and finished right!" "Well, Sere not studying German verbs and goose-stepping up to a Bismarck-herring Sugomeistes with taxes for Clown ince Willie's women and racing-stables. And that's finish enough for mel" "Then everything has been done?" asked the wistful-eyed stranger, "everything that Canada and the Empire needs?" . "There are the loose ends, of course," conceded the man of business with a shrug. "Somebody's got to get after them. But the fire's out, an the Kaiser's playing beaver round thi trée-butts over at Huis-Doorn, and that Armistice-Day - ally; isn't the sort of thing that can last over-night. "1 infer, then, that you served and suffered in this war?' queried the sombre figure at Hardy's side. A cloud settled on the rubicund face with the grizzly temples. "No, I sta right here and stuck to business," pa "But 1 rather think I did my share. 1 held { open for every boy from The Works who went over. I dug down for every drive that came along. And 1 took up a good big chunk of each of our war loans, even when--"" . "That was a sacrifice," murmured the man at his side. And Hardy was quick to deteet and resent a note of irony in that interruption. . "Well, it was meant for a sacrifice," beat, then, the call for doing something for this Canada of ours. '1 dug down until at hurt, and thought country so a neh of bonds that "Then you regard it as finished?" | his side, quietly and quite without nis hub-bub, natur- | he averred; "Things were at a cherry-| and LI out I was being a hero. 1 tried to give my 'something, bul instead of}. sacrifice out of the deal I got { were finding their voice. 'It sounds! { like very fine talk. But talk, after all, | tis talk, and I'm a man of action. I { believe in 'doing' things, instead of | saying them. And | rather imagine | { when you get down to hard-pan and tinie, when they knew the push would | actual performance, that I've done] {shout as:much for this country as you ave." "Have vou?" inquired the man at | rancour, t+ Hardy sat for a moment in thought, {sniffing a phantasmal rebuff in the { ironic calmness of that inquiry. Then | his-face lost a little of its color. "Well, there's one thing 1 want to tell you. Pm not in the habit of | parading my al troubles before | strangers | pick up on the road. But | it may set things a little straighter," -- he paused for a moment or two, and his voice unconsciously deepened, -- { "when I say that I lost my boy, over | there in Flanders." i Hardy could feel the wistful eyes of | the other man searching his face. Some inner commotion of his mind seemed to expend itself in the fury with which he raced his car-engine as they got under way again and went rocking and slewi own into the wide valley before them, 'And all this that you have been telling me," the wist{ul-eyed man at his side finally observed. "it means noth- ing to you, now of all times? It means nothing to you to-day, when you can so confidently tell me that this Canada of yours is a great country?" i Hardy, slowing up at the outskirts of the city, frowned a little. "1 can't say that 1 see any parts cular connection between saying I'm proud of my coun and a mopping-up operation that failed to put in an a earance two years over in "landers," protested the man of business as he crossed a canal-bridge and tooled his car in through the trim gateway of The Works where his day's duties awaited him. "But have we not dreamed, Degan the man at his side, with a singular I "But you can at least glory in that | death?" the stranger finally suggested. { "I'm not so sure that I do," Hardy found himself compelled to admit. | "He was very close to me, that boy. And he was all I had. I'd always { thought of him as carrying on The { Works when 1 was through. But it | fired hint, that first call from overseas, {and he went without a thought of {anything else. He went the way they {all went, for there was a Beast loose inthe world, and it had to be throttled. note of earnestness in his quiet-toned voice, "That our wotk is done, our work for this wide Dominion, before what you have spoken of as the mopping-up has taken place? The enemies ol our Empire hive gone down in defeat, and the big fire is out, is you have said. But how about the salvage-corps and the cleaning up after the tumult and the [ever and the smoke? This country, I am told, is falling | n you. It is calling on you, not for , but for sagacity. It is this morning I've got something to | of impatience, came from the man at the : vey "Let's get down to earth. What I want to know is, just who vou are and where. you're from. What's vour name? There was a moment's silence. dior Jame, Sit 18 Malle. answered © other, umble, "James Wolfe 15 John Hardy Iganed forward, with his thick elbows on the polished rose- w desk-top. "Well, Mister Wolfe, I'm glad- to have met you, And I'll admit that you've stirred me up a bit this morn- ing, and that I've talked to you as I don't talk to most men. There's been a good deal said about this country of ours, and about coming to her help when she's calling for it. But since you seem to know a good deal about what I've done and what to know, since you've ventured to bring the matter up, what you've ever done for this Canada of curs?" "I died ago," answered the voice of the stran- ger, out of a stillness that seemed dis- tur! ingly like the stillness of the he use of God. John Hard started uy with a cry of understanding. opeded and closed. But he found that hie was alone. And he was oppressed a consciousness of trivially uncouth movements in a place of worship. He saw it all now, where before it had seemed so meani 3 He sat before his desk, deep in thought. He sat there without mov- tacles, with a sh papers in his by Ss! with a secretarial sort into the room. "You're a trifle late this morning, Mr H ." ventured the you in 3 2 trolled smile. in the nature of a cataciism, the Chi jetting down to The Works behind % morni 'me_out of the rut wl A of tempered for hovered at attention two men who had I haven't done, I'm 4 little curious Jor it on the Plains of Abraham one hundred and sixty years He Lad heard no movement, no sound of a door being by a dull feeling of shame, not unlike ing even after a Young man in spec- eal r man | with his quick yet con- | For it was something "Ran ing, sir? "I ran into the Truth, on my way | tha , and it threw I'd been | 2DOU of the Victory Loan hak beeo waiting for same {ee ar a fromined | Hardy moved his head, in assent, hale, UE pie say, and I want to say it straight and simple. We've had our troubles, this last year or two, both inside these gates and outside of them. But those troubles are over, and we upder- stand each other a little better. But there's one thing I don't think I've quite 'understood, until 'something gave-me a jolt this morning. Just what that was wouldn't mean much toyou. But we're all glad to think that the war is won, that the agony's over, and we're glad to get the home fires burning again, and once more back lost time. And I guess you want to be a success, to make good, just about ssmachas | do. But there have been times when I was thinking so mach about being a success that I almost forgot about peing a adian. When I think what the boys from the land of the Maple Leaf did over there 1 get a thrill out of it. When remember what they made the verv name of 'Canada' mean, Im proud that 1 belong to the land of the Beaver. But iaJay bring our patriotism home from Flan- ders and plant it right in our own front-yards. We talk about the war being over. It is over. But #f your doctor took your appendix out and you heard him hollering as you came out of the ether; 'Your operation's over--get off the table out," you wouldn't thank him for either what he did or what he didn't do. And that's about what we're up against here in Canada to-day. big fire » out: the Raigers es we've pi the prece a 5 world. Bul that's Sot all. We've a sword-blade pounded ek into a plow-share. A different kind of Yi ve already EE Eb ® are ore creer MIC fakes the a. heard coun! we've got to . 'm driv { enough calling on you, not to come help but to come to four own with thrift. She's calling on t iste ine hip with Johnny uck, the la 0's crowding in next to the rail in this twen tury race for § We're a light-to Big N HE i i if i; : 2ea 28 i) into harness to make up for ° EF € Rs i