DISCOURS EN ANGLAIS DE M. LE MARECHAL FAYOLLE

vvould find them worthy of themselves, faithful to the proud motto General Alderson gave his Iroops when they went up to the trenches for the first time :

« Canadians Never Fall Back. » — This the Germans knew and they dreadedyour coming.

Exasperated by your tenacity, your stubborn resolution never to give way, thev behaved with cruelty towards your prisoners. The « Times » published an article in which unimpeachable witnesses attested that they crucitied one of thèse prisoners, poor human Christ, upon a farm door.

Let me cite, however, the capture by Canadian troopsof Bazentin, Courcelette, Contalmaison in 1916. I refer to this action because 1 was then your neighbour on the Somme, and because we were enthusiastic in m y army over the report of your achievements.

1916 : It was theyear of the battle of Verdun and the Somme ! It was on the Somme that Verdun was deiinitely released. One day, numbers of your régiments will be inscribed in the citadel of the heroic city next to those of the French baitalions of Marshal Pétain.

For 1917 1 shall mention only the capture of Vimy Ridge. This is a point of the front that I know very well, because it was to Lens that the race to the sea brought me up, after the fight for the Grand Couronné in front of Nancy.

I too, attacked Vimy Ridge in 1915. My division and my army corps stormed and carried Carency. Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, Carleul Park, Souchez and finallygot to the ridge preceding Vimy. They were unable to advance and on that part of the front the situation remained unchanged until in 1917 the Canadian corps in a magnificent leap, finished the work begun by the French.

Hère again French blood and Canadian blood soaked the same soil and our dead rest side by side with yours in the same graves.

Canadian efforts were worthy of your great country and of the cause she sought to serve.

You mobilized 600.000 men, who were decimated. Your dead amount to 60.000, and you had more than iso.000 wounded.

It was for thèse heroic sacrifices that France wanted to thank you and this is the reason for our présence hereamong you.

In memory of ourvisit the France-America Comittee, at the suggestion of its Président, Mr. Hanotaux, ex-minister for Foreign Affairs, has desired to présent to you a bust of our great sculptor Rodin.

It represents France.

Gaze on this noble face. It is that of a Lorrainer. Her features refiect her soûl. They bear the stamp of a noble gravity, tinged wilh sadness, but her eyesgleam with asovereign pride, betraying not the vanity of victory, but the consciousness of her civilizing destiny and of her firm will to fulfill that destiny.

She remembers ! She is sad because of her 1 .400.000 dead, for the hundreds

of thousands of her disabled soldiers, the millions of her wounded. While, too, she was pouring forth her blood, her wealth was being drained. Her richest provinces were devastated, whole towns were destroyed. Hundreds and hundreds of her hamlets, once fair and flourishing, are razed to the ground, not one stone remaining on another.

Yet, what matters it? Her intellectuel power remains unbroken. her moral force unshaken !

Already she lias set to work in silence without waiting for the Victory to biing forth its fruits or for the tribute of those just and elementary réparations that the enemy owes her, that he has promised to pay, and that are still in sufferance.

Already she has re-built her railways, her roads, her canals. She is re-constructing her churches, her factories, her villages.

Alas '. what she will never be able to re-build are the glorious witnesses of her History. The old stones of the monuments, her « Titres de Noblesse >/ hâve been turned to dust in the fire or shattered by the guns.

Like Ypres and Louvain, Reims, Soissons, Saint-Quentin, Noyon, Montdidier. Verdun, and many another smaller city has lost the ornements of its ancient sanctuaries. its old castles and its antique dwellings. That magnificent survival of the past has vanished for ever.

Yet again, what matters it? We know that with nations, as with men, beauty résides above ail, in the soûl, and France, who stoically resisted on her own soil the savage and destructive war that saved the world, has shown sufficiently her capacity for sacrifice as well as her power of résistance.

What France wants now is Peace . That she is deeply attached to Peace one ought never to doubt. She wanted Peace before the War, she needs it, she requires it still more imperiously to-day after the Victory.

But unfortunately it dépends not on heralone to secure Peace. Just as the Victory was a common Victory, Peace is bound to be the common achievement of the Allies.

That is why France remains so firmly attached to her alliances, even when that attitude costs her heavy sacrifices.

Of the friends who helped her during the War, none are dearer to her heart than the Canadian people, to whom everything unités her and from whom there is nothing to separate her.

In pledge of her love she présents to the Canadian people to-day with this bronze, which is her very image on which are engraved thèse words :