CANADA AND THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 15, 18 January 1940, Page 8

CANADA AND THE WAR

As Canadians note the success of their first war loan they must hope that (this war will not have the same influence on their national debt as the last conflict. That played a large part in raising% the interest on the national indebtedness ten times. In 1911 Canadians were paying about 13,000,000 dollars a year in interest on Government borrowings; in 1920 the annual interest Bill had risen to 133,000,000 dollars. These figures, of course, are rather misleading, for .they fail to take into account the change in the value of money between ■ the first-mentioned year and the last, but they show a remarkable rise for all that. The World War also introduced a new era in Canadian, finance, and observers must be speculating if the new conflict will continue the same trend. Before 1914 Canada obtained virtually all her foreign capital needed for development from Britain. After the first war year the United States supplied most of the funds raised abroad, the value of Canadian bonds sold there rising from the low figure of 35,000,00 dollars in 1905-9 to 967,000,000 dollars in 1920-24, and British lending shrinking from 951,000,000 dollars in 1910-14 to 18,000,000 in 1920----24. . - ' ,'' ■■ . ..-*■■ :■"' . • Canadian military aid for Britain has been almost equally swift this time. In 1914, mobilisation of men for service abroad began early in August even before Parliament met. By October a Canadian-trained fo.rce of 30,000 men had landed in Britain and another contingent of 20,000 was in training camp. This time the first Canadians to reach Britain arrived last month, and there is also another division still in training at home, though there seems to be some suggestion that it may serve elsewhere than in France. In the last war Canada enlisted 595,000 men and 52,000 were killed in action, while J. 0,000 died from other causes. Canadians fought Some of the hardest battles on the Western Front, including the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, the 'engagements of St. Eloi and Sanctuary Wood in the prolonged Battle of the Somme; Vimy Ridge in 1917, and Passchendaele, while they also,drove back the Germans in 1918 and penetrated the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg Line, finally taking Cambrai after the great Battle, of Artas. At the Armistice, by one of history's curious rhythms, they were at Mons, from which the British retreat had begun four years before.