Libel?

On the day that the World War Armistice was signed, Nov, 11, 1918, gallant Canadian troops took Mons. Recently a Canadian journal, the Port Hope Guide, said scathingly of this action:

"There was much waste of human life during the War, enormous loss of lives which should not have taken place. But it is doubtful whether, in any case, there was a more deliberate and useless waste of human life than in the so-called capture of Mons. . . .

"It was the last day [of the War] and the last hour, and almost the last minute, when to glorify the Canadian Headquarters Staff, the Commander-in-Chief conceived the mad idea that it would be a fine thing to say that the Canadians had fired the last shot in the Great War and had captured the last German entrenchments before the bugles sounded 11 o'clock, when the armistice which had been signed by both sides would begin officially."

The onetime Commander-in-Chief thus flayed is General Sir Arthur Currie, peppery, jealous of his honor, and, since 1920, the respected civilian Principal of famed McGill University. Last week he was engaged, at Cobourg, Ontario, in suing the Port Hope Guide for $50,000 damages.

Although the case will not come up for trial until April 16th, General Currie made public, last week, a quantity of Staff reports which appeared to show that the

Canadians had entered Mons at midnight and cleared the Germans out by 4:30 a. m. on Nov, 11, 1918, and that the news that the Armistice had been signed did not reach General Currie until 6:45.

Observers doubted whether a jury would award $50,000 in the belief that at the fatal hour of 4:30 a. m. the Canadian Staff was still heavily discounting the fact that the Armistice negotiations had begun 3 days previously, on Nov. 8, 1918.