Already von Kluck with his four hundred thousand of conquering warriors was at the gates of Paris.
Most ominous of all, the British army, that gallant, little sacrificial army, of a scant seventy-five thousand men, holding like a bulldog to the flank of von Bulow's mighty army, fifty times as strong, threatened by von Kluck on the left flank and by von Housen on the right, was slowing down the German advance, but was itself being slowly ground into the bloody dust of the northern and eastern roads of Northern and Eastern France.
Black days these were for the men of British blood.

Was the world to see something new in war?
Were Germans to overcome men of the race of Nelson, and Wellington and Colin Campbell?
At home, hundreds of thousands were battering at the recruiting offices.
In the Dominions of the Empire overseas it was the same.

In Canada a hundred thousand men were demanding a place in the first Canadian contingent of thirty-five thousand, now almost ready to sail.

General Sam at Ottawa was being snowed under by entreating, insistent, cajoling, threatening telegrams.

Already northern Alberta had sent two thousand men.