Peace

As last week began, Canada had no enthusiasm for the war she was in. She was miserably conscious of her weakness. Her war machinery creaked. No one liked being committed to Britain's foreign policy without having a voice in it.

But before the week was over two events, one in Europe, the other in Can ada, one a thing of spirit, the other of flesh and blood, had served to unify Cana dian opinion. One brought into the fold Canada's dissident minority, the 2,500,000 French Catholics of the Province of Que bec. The news which fired them was the entrance of pagan Russia into Catholic Poland, the leaguing together of Satan's archangels, J. Stalin with A. Hitler.

The other event brought the war over seas. At 9:25 on a grey morning a black-hulled little freighter called City of Flint, usually carrying six passengers, sailed into Halifax with 223 survivors of the torpedoed Athenia. The flag was at half-mast.

Fussy Canadian immigration and customs regulations were suspended; grey-faced and worn survivors were hurried ashore, seven of them to hospitals.

Wearily the Athenia' s passengers told their stories to reporters whose questions were not brash or prying. What was there to tell? Yes, it was a submarine. There was a terrific shock, the lights went out, the tables in the dining room slid across the floor, women screamed and children began to cry--people were just lighting cigarets, just finishing coffee after dinner, just reaching for something to read--there was heroism, as always, and panic, as always; there was a man who stole a Minneapolis girl's flashlight and a few members of the crew who crowded into lifeboats; there was an eleven-year-old boy who heard his small brother cry, "Jump, Mother, jump!" and then saw him disappear forever; there was a Houston girl who, tossed into the water, saw a man beside her "just gasp and die"; there was a baby carried down the gangplank wrapped in a seaman's green-&-white-striped jersey; there was John Hayworth of Hamilton, Ont., father of ten-year-old Margaret Hayworth, whose head was crushed in the explosion, waiting at the pier for his wife to disembark. Mrs. Hayworth met him, and sobbed, "Dear God, John, she's gone."

Next day Premier Mitchell Frederick Hepburn of Ontario asked the Ottawa Government to order flags flown at half-mast for Margaret Hayworth, asserted that the "world's jury" had found Adolf Hitler guilty of the child's murder. Dr. Richard L. Jenkins, of Warwick, N. Y., returning from an Edinburgh scientific convention when the Athenia was torpedoed, had written a poem "to the memory of Margaret Hayworth" on the voyage over:

Well--here is peace; the peace that lasts forever,

The peace of still blue lips and darkened eyes

That stare through half-shut lashes and will never

Awaken to the glint of azure skies.

Yes, here is peace, now that the last convulsion

Relaxes, as the heart gives up the strain.

All sense of skill is tainted with revulsion

When skill can only serve to lengthen pain.

Her face is fair. She was a pretty child. Ten years she grew and budded for tonight:

Ten years of nurture to be reconciled With darkened eyes reflecting lifeless light.

What was her fault? Some failed to comprehend

The deathless glory of the Nazi State;

Some men there are who venture to contend

When alien arms would settle Poland's fate.

Torpedoes give reply. Though immature She drained the cup, and now has found release.

Her broken body is, in miniature, A Hitler triumph, and a Nazi peace.

Ears tire of brutal, strident acclamations, This much a fool can see, be he not blind,

While such men can unleash the might of nations,

This is the only peace the world will find.

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