Chapter XVI: War Service

The Canadian Pacific Railway was and is a triumph of constructive endeavour in the days of peace. We have spoken of the army of men at work, from the turning of the first sod, all through the grading, the tracklaying and the operation of the road, as a peaceful mobile army which moved with tireless tread in the march of civilization. It was the business of these men to build and not to destroy, to gather together and not to scatter abroad, to conserve and not to dissipate the natural assets of Canada. In doing this work the Railway would be performing a great task in relation to the stability of human society and would send coursing through the arteries of commerce that national and international trade which has so much to do with the calm health of the world. But, alas! there are times when the peace of the earth is rudely interrupted by some megalomaniac who kicks the anthill of the world’s population and sends the inhabitants into wild confusion. In such times it becomes necessary to resist and subdue the disturber, if need be, by force. Pacifism is a high ideal if all would seek to work it out together; but, changing to another figure of speech, we all know that it is useless to reason with a mad dog running amuck on the world’s thoroughfare. Hence there are occasions, unhappily, when the peaceful have not only to stand on the defensive but to carry war into the enemy’s country, so as to compel the inciter to war to remember that other people have a right to life and liberty and happiness on this round globe. On such occasions the machinery of traffic has to be temporarily diverted, in some degree, from its accustomed employment and swung into the conflict for ultimate peace.

In this regard the great railway of which we are writing has done its startlingly large share at home and abroad. It will be remembered that the road was not finished over the North Shore of Lake Superior when Mr. Van Horne, who had, months before, offered help in such a possible emergency case, transported troops to the scene of the Riel outbreak on the North and South Saskatchewan. We spoke specially of the North Shore in relation to bringing troops from the Eastern Provinces, but we must also bear in mind that troops were rushed from Winnipeg westward with pronounced effect. Those were my student days in Winnipeg, but it was my privilege to be one of the Winnipeg Light Infantry which was specially raised and rushed on the new road by troop train to Calgary. This was an exceedingly important movement, because the massacre at Frog Lake, down the North Saskatchewan from Edmonton, had taken place and the Indian tribes were very restless all over the vast area from the boundary line away to the north. We left some companies at points in what is now Southern Alberta where the war-like tribes of the Blackfeet, Piegans, Bloods and others had their habitat. Their great chief, Crowfoot, befriended in the early days by the Mounted Police, was loyal, but young braves under the prevailing excitement might break away and were none the worse of seeing a few red-coats in the locality. From Calgary the rest of our regiment, along with the 65th of Montreal, and a few splendid Mounted Police and Scouts, marched north to Edmonton. We passed through some tribes that were very much agitated by Riel’s runners, and on to Edmonton, which, but for the timely arrival of our column, would have shared the fate of Forts Pitt and Victoria, not far away, which had already been looted and burned by the Frog Lake and other Indians under Big Bear and Wandering Spirit. Similarly, were troops rushed westward from Winnipeg to Swift Current, whence they marched for the relief of Battleford, which was beleaguered by Indians, and farther east others went on the railway till they came to the point nearest Batoche, where Riel and Gabriel Dumont were at the centre of revolt. Riel had sent his runners out in all directions, saying to the Indians that there were only a few Mounted Police in the country and that the Queen’s soldiers could not reach the Far West. My own recollection is that the Indians amongst whom we came were positively amazed at the suddenness of our appearance in their remote districts. Prevention is better than cure, and there is no doubt at all but that the effect of the inflammatory appeal of Riel was headed off by the swift arrival of soldiers. But for this the whole prairie might have been overrun by maddened Indians, who would have made many massacres like that of the nine unfortunate white men whose mangled bodies we buried on the Frog Lake Indian Reserve. After the rebellion was crushed, the Government at Ottawa took many Indian Chiefs to the Eastern Provinces in order that these Indians might see the strength of “the Queen’s people.” This trip was an effective deterrent on any more uprisings and not the least of the influences for peace were the “fire wagons” that drew trains along steel trails with such swiftness that the Indian ponies were left hopelessly behind. The Riel outbreak was not a great war, but it might have led to massacre, pillage and ruin only for the demonstration of power made possible by the railway transport before the flame of revolt got fairly started. For that service, of enormous value to Canada and the Empire, we who knew the situation will always be grateful for the work of the Canadian Pacific in a critical hour. The swift suppression of the Riel revolt put the all-Canadian railway conspicuously on the map of the Empire as a new element of power in her far-flung battle-line.

When the Great War broke over the world so suddenly in 1914, the Canadian Pacific had, in the interval since Riel’s outbreak and the primitive line of that day, grown into the world’s greatest transportation system by land and sea. It is remembered now of course that the War took most people unawares, so that they acted in the emergency according to the attitude their manner of thinking had developed. It is a striking comment on the thinking of President Shaughnessy, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, that while others in various places hesitated he at once put the resources of the Company, with its world-wide system on land and sea, at the disposal of the Empire. This was all the more remarkable when we recall that he was foreign born and had only come to Canada when he had grown to man’s estate. The fact was that he had become intensely Canadian. It seems a law of human life that people come to love the cause for which they make sacrifices. Shaughnessy had sacrificed much for Canada and its progress. He had left his own country and his home at an age when these mean much and when for him certain promotion on well-established roads was within reach. He had come to a new enterprise in a comparatively new country with an uncertain future and he had passed through circumstances that imposed upon him, for some years, a mental strain which amounted to positive suffering. I do not suppose that either he or Van Horne ever became less attached to their native land to the south of the line, but the stupendous undertaking of Canada’s pioneer transcontinental railway so absorbed the intense devotion of all their energies that they became profoundly Canadian. They did not love the United States less, but the immense enterprise to which they gave the best years of their lives in Canada bound them with unmistakable loyalty to their adopted country. When the War broke out, Mr. Van Horne had retired from active service in the Canadian Pacific and was in poor health, but his heart was in sympathy with Canada and he exerted himself to do what he could. Shaughnessy, as we have said, wheeled the whole system into line to help win the War. The transcontinental trains had to be kept moving with precision, to transport troops and to rush to the front stores of food from the granary of the Empire on the Western plains. But the huge workshops were turned into shell factories and became hives of industry for the manufacture of the destructive enginery of war. Shaughnessy, at the request of the Home Government, loaned to the work of war transportation some of the ablest officials of the Company in that department. In an effort to reorganize the broken-down transportation of Russia, Shaughnessy sent to that strange land one of the keenest minded officials of the Canadian Pacific in the person of George Bury, who was knighted for the efforts he made there in a period seething with discontent and revolution.

Although it would not do to cripple the system at the home base, every facility was given to employees to enlist for military service abroad. I have seen with Mr. F. W. Peters, the popular and efficient General Superintendent of the Railway in British Columbia, a copy of the instructions issued by Shaughnessy and sent out to leading officials all over the system. It was intimated therein that to all employees who enlisted, their full pay would be continued for six months (many thought the war would be brief) and that places equivalent to those they had occupied when they enlisted would be given to those who returned. There were over eleven thousand enlistments and of these about eleven hundred were killed in action. So well was the promise as to re-employment kept that former employees to the number of nearly eight thousand were taken on again, and in addition some fourteen thousand other returned soldiers were given situations—a most remarkable showing. It is quite well known that the Company also did all it could for the dependants of those who did not return.

In tribute to the unreturning brave the Canadian Pacific erected permanent memorials in bronze and tablets all over the system in order that succeeding generations might not forget. Upon each bronze monument and each tablet are these fine words:

“To commemorate those in the service of the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company, who, at the call of king and country, left all
that was dear to them, endured hardship, faced danger and
finally passed out of sight of men by the path of duty and
self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live
in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that their names
be not forgotten. 1914-1918.”

We have been thus far studying the war service of the Canadian Pacific with our minds principally upon the forces drawn from the land portion of the system. But there is in some respects a more wonderful record on the sea. Not that the men on the sea were more valorous than those on the land; but the men on the sea, being located in ships, were more easily followed than the men who in the land or the air forces were scattered in various localities on many battle fronts.

Almost every ship of the Canadian Pacific fleet went on war duty, and fifteen of these were lost by torpedoes or mines or other similar causes on the high seas. These lost vessels represented over a third of the tonnage engaged. Behind this simple statement are many tales of heroism of which there is no permanent record, and there are achievements of thrilling importance done in practically all parts of the world. It is possible for us to give only an outline which can be filled in with deeds of gallantry and valour by the imagination of any reader who knows the traditions of our British men on the high seas of the world.

“If blood be the price of Admiralty,
Lord God, we have paid it full:
We have strawed our best to the world’s unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.”

By following the log of some of the Canadian Pacific vessels we get at least some of the bare facts.

The _Empress of France_ had barely reached the dock at Liverpool, two days after war was declared, when she was requisitioned for special service by royal proclamation. Within a few days after her cargo was unloaded, all passenger accommodation and other wood work was removed. Armed with eight six-inch guns, she was sent out, manned by a naval crew, to patrol in the North Sea between Shetland and Iceland, and became, a few months later, the flagship of the patrol squadron, in which service she intercepted 15,000 ships. Later, she was transferred to convoy service in the North Atlantic route. In that service she escorted nine convoys of twenty vessels each, carrying per convoy about 30,000 troops, mostly Americans on their way to the front. Some indication of the extent of the war service of the _Empress of France_ may be gathered from the fact that while in commission she steamed 267,000 knots and consumed 170,000 tons of coal. These figures as to only one vessel out of many, tell little of the services and the hardships of a gallant crew, but they shed some light on the frightful monetary cost of war.

The _Empress of Britain_, one of the new and large vessels, was fitted out as a transport, carrying troops to the Dardanelles, Egypt and India; also from Canada to the Western Front. Besides her own crew she accommodated 5,000 officers and men. During one of her trips across the Atlantic with a full complement of crew and soldiers, a German submarine launched two torpedoes, one of which missed the bow by three feet and the other passed some ten feet astern. It was all in the day’s work; but that was a close shave “between the devil and the deep sea!”

The splendid new steamer, the _Calgarian_, of the Atlantic service, was one of the many Canadian ships sunk by the enemy during the War, but not before doing some notable work. Along with the famous _Vindictive_, the _Calgarian_ blocked Lisbon to prevent German ships sheltering there from coming out on raids into the Atlantic; and later, for nearly a year of continuous service, was stationed outside New York to prevent the escape of German ships interned there. Then, when she was convoying thirty vessels across the Atlantic, she was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of forty-nine men.

Our old Pacific Coast friend, the _Empress of Russia_, had a thrilling experience as an Admiralty cruiser. She left Vancouver for Hong-Kong on her usual run in August, 1914, but she was already designated for war service. At Hong-Kong her interior fittings were taken out and replaced by coal bunkers, and eight guns were mounted fore and aft. British Naval Reservists and French gun crews were put aboard in place of the Chinese hands, and the _Empress_ started out to work. Shortly afterwards she met the pride of Australia, the cruiser _Sydney_, after that gallant ship had smashed the wicked German rover, the _Emden_. The _Russia_ took off the prisoner members of the _Emden_ crew, including the Captain, Von Muller, and put them out of commission by landing them at Ceylon. With the help of some Indian troops, she captured the Turkish fort of Kamaran on the Red Sea. Then, for twenty-three days, she and her sister Canadian Pacific vessel, the _Empress of Asia_, guarded the British port of Aden until the arrival of British warships. After some more dangerous experiences, the _Empress of Russia_, the _Empress of Asia_, the _Empress of Japan_, the cruiser _Himalaya_, and the destroyer _Ribble_, kept in blockade the Port of Manilla, where fifteen German ships were hiding in the hope of getting out with supplies to their war vessels. Finally the _Russia_ spent a year cruising in the East, and then, when the War was over, slipped back quietly on to her old peaceful run out of Vancouver to the Orient.

One can only sum up in a wondering way the enormous service done for the Empire by this great railway company, by saying that during the War, Canadian Pacific ships carried over a million troops and passengers on war business. They carried over four millions of tons of cargo and munitions of war, and many thousands of horses and mules for transport service on the field. And perhaps one of the most amazing and least-known feats of the Canadian Pacific was the carrying to and from Flanders and France, through Vancouver, of what seemed a numberless army of Chinese from the North of China, who went out to do the unskilled labour on the field and thus released thousands of the allied soldiers for the fighting line, who otherwise would have had to do this highly necessary non-combatant work.

Letters from Mr. David Lloyd George, the dynamic war-time Premier of Britain, and others, to the Company and to officials, conveyed the appreciation of the Old Land to the Canadian Pacific for its unique assistance in a crisis hour. Many decorations worn by Canadian Pacific men who served on land and sea, and the scars of battle on many of her ships, attest the unique way in which President Shaughnessy (one of whose sons fell in action) and his wide-reaching organization came to the assistance of the Motherland when vital things were in danger. Let this great service not be lost sight of when petty matters and little controversies in commercial life have their innings.

A peculiarly striking sidelight is thrown on the general subject of war by the changing attitude to the subject of Sir William Van Horne, who lived only a year into the war period, but who studied it all with the thoroughness so characteristic of the man. Some years before the Great War he had written to Mr. S. S. McClure, in New York, almost in praise of war as a creator of heroisms and an inspiration to valiant endeavour. But as he studied the Great War, with its horrible engines of destruction, high explosives and silent, stealthy weapons of death on land and sea and in the air, he began to see the monstrous side of such a method for settling international differences. He saw the frightful annihilation of some of the brightest young men whose record he knew in his own organization, and whose services to the country, had they been spared, would have been beyond price. One would like to have had his changed attitude put into words by himself in his own vivid and vigorous way. Perhaps he would have left us an expression of assured hope that the day would come

“When the war-drums throb no longer
And the battle-flags are furled
In the Parliament of man,
The Federation of the world.”

But, despite all its horrors, war has, for human society, some compensation in the fact that it reveals suddenly certain elements of good in the world whose existence we had only dimly realized before. I remember how, as a boy, riding on horseback over the prairie in dark nights, I used to conjecture in a vague way as to the character of the trail ahead and as to what life of man or animal might be shrouded in the blackness. And I recall how fascinating it was to have flashes of lightning break recurrently now and then from the clouds, each flash burning its way into the darkness, revealing the trail, showing cattle and horses and the humble homesteads of pioneers who were beginning to settle on the plain. It has sometimes seemed to me that war is a flash of lightning which reveals much hitherto only dimly imagined as existing in society. That it reveals many mean and disquieting features and qualities in human life goes without saying. But that it also reveals many noble characteristics, is amply demonstrated. The recent Great War, for instance, revealed the greatness of the common man who, from some unspectacular occupation, where these qualities were present but unnoticed by the community, went out where the lightning flash of war disclosed to the world marvels of heroism and self-sacrifice. Similarly, we often discovered in the common business world and amidst business organizations at home, a readiness to serve and sacrifice which before had only been dimly understood as existing at all. The War revealed it.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, which had overcome early difficulties on the road to success, was probably regarded by the average Canadian with some patriotic pride as a prosperous organization, but possibly he thought it was not much concerned about things beyond its own welfare. Yet it is not too much to say that the War suddenly revealed in it vital qualities of loyalty to the Empire and showed the Company personified as a good citizen of Canada. As a citizen it threw itself into the business of helping to defend the country and to assist in making conditions as good as possible in war times.

The recent incident in the earthquake in Japan will illustrate my point as being in keeping with the traditions of the Company. There at Yokohama the Canadian Pacific steamship, the _Empress of Australia_, as related elsewhere, was just casting off, when the earthquake took place. Taking interest in the safety of themselves and their ship mainly as a means of helping others, Captain Robinson and his gallant crew became a band devoted to heroic rescue. We need not detail the story here, but, the captain and men, knowing the traditions of the Company, did not consider for a moment the immense expense and loss they were incurring in cancelling a voyage and placing the ship and all their stores at the disposal of the suffering and destitute.

The War gave the Canadian Pacific many opportunities of living up to these traditions, and the Company did not fail. While its ships were being sunk in service on the high seas and its general business on land was being dislocated, the Company did its part as a citizen in the enlistments, as already recorded. But, in addition, every good cause which aimed at alleviating human suffering and administering to human comfort found what to some must have seemed a surprisingly large support from the Company. Hospitals at home and field hospitals abroad, Red Cross movements, nurses’ homes, returned soldiers, disabled men and their dependants, Y. M. C. A’s, Salvation Army efforts, and all such persons or organizations were on the list for assistance in a big way. The War brought this out more distinctly, but it was part of the Company’s tradition. It is trustee for the funds of its shareholders, and cannot throw these funds away to improvident people or undeserving causes; but it uniformly seeks to help the community in the interests of the general weal. The Canadian Pacific Railway, owning and maintaining in Canada an enormous amount of property and employing over one hundred thousand people, who receive eight millions monthly in salaries and wages, is manifestly an extraordinary contributor to the upkeep of the Dominion in the ordinary business way. When we add to this the fact of the Railway’s support of all worthy causes, we are able to estimate in some degree the value to Canada of its citizenship.