In the Autumn of 1914, after John McCrae had gone over-seas,
I was in a warehouse in Montreal, in which one might find
an old piece of mahogany wood. His boxes were there in storage,
with his name plainly printed upon them. The storeman, observing my interest,
remarked: "This Doctor McCrae cannot be doing much business;
he is always going to the wars." The remark was profoundly significant
of the state of mind upon the subject of war which prevailed at the time
in Canada in more intelligent persons. To this storeman war merely meant
that the less usefully employed members of the community
sent their boxes to him for safe-keeping until their return.
War was a great holiday from work; and he had a vague remembrance
that some fifteen years before this customer had required of him
a similar service when the South African war broke out.
Either `in esse' or `in posse' John McCrae had "always been going
to the wars." At fourteen years of age he joined the Guelph Highland Cadets,
and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. As his size and strength increased
he reverted to the ranks and transferred to the Artillery. In due time
he rose from gunner to major. The formal date of his "Gazette" is 17-3-02
as they write it in the army; but he earned his rank in South Africa.
War was the burden of his thought; war and death the theme of his verse.
At the age of thirteen we find him at a gallery in Nottingham,
writing this note: "I saw the picture of the artillery going over
the trenches at Tel-el-Kebir. It is a good picture; but there are four teams
on the guns. Perhaps an extra one had to be put on." If his nomenclature
was not correct, the observation of the young artillerist was exact.
Such excesses were not permitted in his father's battery in Guelph, Ontario.
During this same visit his curiosity led him into the House of Lords,
and the sum of his written observation is, "When someone is speaking
no one seems to listen at all."
His mother I never knew. Canada is a large place. With his father I had
four hours' talk from seven to eleven one June evening in London in 1917.
At the time I was on leave from France to give the Cavendish Lecture,
a task which demanded some thought; and after two years in the army
it was a curious sensation — watching one's mind at work again.
The day was Sunday. I had walked down to the river to watch the flowing tide.
To one brought up in a country of streams and a moving sea
the curse of Flanders is her stagnant waters. It is little wonder
the exiles from the Judaean hillsides wept beside the slimy River.
The Thames by evening in June, memories that reached from Tacitus
to Wordsworth, the embrasure that extends in front of the Egyptian obelisk
for a standing place, and some children "swimming a dog"; —
that was the scene and circumstance of my first meeting with his father.
A man of middle age was standing by. He wore the flashings
of a Lieutenant-Colonel and for badges the Artillery grenades.
He seemed a friendly man; and under the influence of the moment,
which he also surely felt, I spoke to him.
"A fine river," — That was a safe remark.
"But I know a finer."
"Pharpar and Abana?" I put the stranger to the test.
"No," he said. "The St. Lawrence is not of Damascus." He had answered
to the sign, and looked at my patches.
"I have a son in France, myself," he said. "His name is McCrae."
"Not John McCrae?"
"John McCrae is my son."
The resemblance was instant, but this was an older man
than at first sight he seemed to be. I asked him to dinner at Morley's,
my place of resort for a length of time beyond the memory
of all but the oldest servants. He had already dined
but he came and sat with me, and told me marvellous things.
David McCrae had raised, and trained, a field battery in Guelph,
and brought it overseas. He was at the time upwards of seventy years of age,
and was considered on account of years alone "unfit" to proceed to the front.
For many years he had commanded a field battery in the Canadian militia,
went on manoeuvres with his "cannons", and fired round shot.
When the time came for using shells he bored the fuse with a gimlet;
and if the gimlet were lost in the grass, the gun was out of action
until the useful tool could be found. This "cannon ball"
would travel over the country according to the obstacles it encountered and,
"if it struck a man, it might break his leg."
In such a martial atmosphere the boy was brought up,
and he was early nourished with the history of the Highland regiments.
Also from his father he inherited, or had instilled into him,
a love of the out of doors, a knowledge of trees, and plants,
a sympathy with birds and beasts, domestic and wild.
When the South African war broke out a contingent was dispatched from Canada,
but it was so small that few of those desiring to go could find a place.
This explains the genesis of the following letter:
