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NEWSPAPERS emerged from the War to find themselves faced with the question: Now what?

What, after its vast drama, its graphic daily interest, its all-inclusiveness, could now be news? The commonplace murder, grist of the courts, Parliament, Society, books, sport, sermons, the Theatre?

That scarcely seemed possible. Would such ordinary things satisfy after nearly five years’ surfeit of tumultuous emotion? What could conceivably grip the attention of the sated world and fill the void left by the ending of the carnage? There was always Prohibition, there was the Peace Conference and there was Reconstruction—pinochle after a bull fight! What would supply that excitement and suspense to which readers had been tuned by the now silent guns?

Living so much in the present, few newspapermen guessed how quickly the world would react and forget, swing into a Rainbow Decade and shout “Show us a profit! On with the dance! Whoopee!” Only the wise and very experienced could have sensed the coming of a multitude of new sensations, fabulous values, strange ideas, stranger ideals, crowd heroes and wish dreams to tread the stage—the crash!—the blind stumbling, revolutionary fumbling, national fears and mass despairs of the aftermath.

Babe Ruth and his home runs, Jack Dempsey drawing million-dollar gates, Bobby Jones and his bag of clubs, hockey in ice palaces, Tilden and the tennis circus, wrestling as melodrama, marathon swims, marathon dancing and contract bridge with its Culbertsons had yet to arrive.

The black shirts of Mussolini, the brown shirts of Hitler, the nightshirts of the Ku Klux Klan, like the loin cloth of Gandhi, the temple dress of Aimée Semple McPherson and the trousers of Marlene Dietrich, had yet to be woven.

Aviation loomed with post-war interest but threw no shadow of Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, the Mollisons and Wiley Post, flights to the stratosphere, polar hops, dirigibles foundering and girls suiciding in couples by dropping from the clouds.

Rum-running, bootlegging, Al Capone, “Legs” Diamond, “Bugs” Moran, a Frankenstein of United States crime, gangsters and rackets, murder as a trade, the St. Valentine’s Day machine-gun massacre in Chicago, and Dillinger, lay hidden in the future. So did the spectre of kidnapping and the Hauptmann hysteria.

Newspapermen did not foresee Stalin and the Five-Year Plan, Japan gobbling Manchuria, the Florida boom, economic nationalism, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the N.R.A., gold standard chaos, Ramsay Macdonald as the friend of duchesses, Lloyd George in eclipse and revival, a new social theory for every day of the week, Canada shutting her door to immigrants, the rise of isms, the Bank of Canada, the King of the Belgians being killed mountain climbing, revolt in Spain, the assassination of the King of Jugo-Slavia, Samuel Insull on trial, Huey Long as a new white hope; and insulin, the Dionne quintuplets and the toe-pulling of Dr. Locke of Williamsburg as Canadian achievements.

They did not know that nations would burn wheat, coffee and sugar, kill little pigs by the thousand and plough down cotton because there was too much, though millions lacked food and clothes.

They could not foresee Rudolph Valentino and Rudy Vallee, shieks, crooners, IT girls and platinum blondes, Jackie Coogan and Shirley Temple, the Fire Chief and Joe Penner’s duck—Father Coughlin talking from Detroit, Admiral Byrd from the South Pole and the late King George on Christmas morning and his Jubilee from Buckingham Palace.

They had no premonition of Couéism, relativity, the disappearance of Ambrose Small, psycho-analysis, the resurrection of Charles Dickens, the Oxford Groups, cosmic rays, babbitry, radium at Great Bear Lake, Mary Pickford’s divorce, nudism, Gertrude Stein, technocracy, Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Blue Bird, Walter Winchell’s column, relief camps, hunger marches, Rockefeller in his nineties giving away dimes, the Prince of Wales as a travelling ambassador, the Winnipeg or San Francisco strikes, the Tennessee monkey trial, Ethopia or sanctions, and the reoccupation of the Rhineland.

What a diversity of values the world has known since the War! What a variety of figures and figurines! What a motley has been the passing show! Altruism and greed, science and quackery, liberty and reaction, luxury and want, super-speed and feudalism have marched cheek by jowl across the parade ground. Men have died for their beliefs while others swayed to the carioca. Women have sneaked to secret mass while their sisters had their faces lifted. Civilization has had a thousand guises in this feverish era as change has trodden on the heels of change in the dismal, merry goose-stepping of low, middle and high society. Whoopee indeed!

Such have been the unpredictable years of romance, action, revolution and discovery on which The Star, emerging quickened by its own intensive effort in the War to give a news service second to none, entered. It was not to miss much of the panorama at home or abroad; or fail, in its own way, to record and interpret the jigsaw kaleidoscope. It was on its news side that I was privileged to play a part.

When the War ended the paper was not content to swim along with the stream of the coming peace days. It decided to go outside the purely local field for news; to dig and delve into the more distant scene and show how it worked, high-light its prominent figures, seize on angles of human interest to expand and feature; to pursue interviews with the great, the near-great and the momentary oddity; to fling men up and down Canada and the United States on the least hint of pathos, comedy, queerness or sensation; eventually to send correspondents to Europe and wandering reporters to the far corners of the earth; to lay down a barrage of coverage when major news broke within its orbit, hurl men at a dramatic task on the home front in such intensive, planned fashion that nothing of interest could escape the draw-net and that such a spread of feature stories, human interest, explanation and pictures would result that people would have to turn to its sheer worth of enterprise, enthusiasm and colour.

Its methods were, on occasion, those of a fire department and a military attack combined. When bigger events happened, The Star marched automatically. That gave, for years, a glorious sense of action.

Dynamic, imaginative Desk organization in the office planned every move like an army headquarters. Men went to the news front to work, strive, fight for what the paper sought; tireless, sleepless as soldiers while the attack lasted. Aeroplanes, special trains, fast automobiles, speed boats, telegraph, telephone and radio figured in the swift garnering of news.

What travelling men did, in summer, in winter, by day, by night! What roaring down the roads to some rendezvous with events! Get there fast! Get there first! Get photographs! Miss nothing! Mop up! Get everything and get it in!

Many men played many parts in all this enterprise which had no parallel in Canada and was not surpassed by newspapers anywhere to win and display a news coverage that was fresh, vital, startling. They made a staff that had more than its share of nerve, vivacity and devotion. It is impossible to mention them individually. I must from now on keep to my own narrow path through these years and happenings.

Early in December, 1918, having recovered from the influenza which took me off the Desk as Telegraph Editor, I was ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia, winter port of Canada, to meet and write of the host of Canadian soldiers returning from the War. Troopships were coming in three or four times a week with the men who had been as long as four years overseas and the heart of the country turned there as they disembarked by the thousand to entrain across the Dominion. What a moment it was for them! They had longed for it, dreamed of it, prayed for it, in muddy trench and battered dugout—and now they were home. No longer boys and civilians, but veterans.

Arthur Chambers of The Toronto Telegram was companion and rival on the assignment. Except for local reporters we were the only Canadian newspapermen covering the home-coming of the Canadian army. We had it, therefore, very much to ourselves and took every advantage of it. Not only were we news gatherers but we represented to thousands of Ontario men, particularly, their first civilian contact. The Star! The Telegram! Now they knew that they were back indeed.

The troops came pouring home in a heavy intermittent flow. In a single week of January, 1919, three great ships, the Olympic, the Aquitania and the Empress of Britain disgorged 13,500 men, not as a mob, but still in the units in which they had served at the front.

The first docking of the Olympic, early in December with 5,364 soldiers on board, made an unforgettable incident. Halifax turned out to welcome her as if she were a living thing, as indeed she was. She was not only one of the greatest of ships but for three years she had been carrying troops, dodging submarines, trudging fearlessly back and forth across the Atlantic. Now, the War over, she was being welcomed back just as the soldiers were being welcomed home.

Fog overhung the harbour as she came in that morning but thousands of people lined the wharves and occupied vantage ground on adjacent buildings. I had taken up a position on top of the immigration sheds which served as clearing dépôt to obtain a full view of the spectacle before going on board to comb through the soldiers. I thought I was alone. Later I was to discover a band at the other side.

The liner stayed long invisible, though out of the fog thundered the roar of sirens greeting her progress. Then, suddenly, almost stealthily, she stole into sight, turning in the stream. First the tops of her masts, the spars, then the funnels, the bridge, finally her big hull became visible as she loomed slowly nearer.

That was suspense, as she came creeping until her camouflaged bulk showed clearly in its patchery of blue, white and black—and on her decks, swarming over her boats, over her bow, high up in her rigging, hundreds of soldiers might be seen waving, in khaki greatcoats, with steel helmets, rifles and field kits.

Soon came the mellow, fog-muffled rippling of their shouts and cheers. It drew closer and rose. Shortly it was a clangorous baying, hard, savage, joyous, that broke in rivulets and waves. All along the shores came an answering roar.

I stood spellbound by the sheer history of the moment. My heart was turbulent with emotion of this mass returning, as I thought of the War, the cruelty of it, the waste, the pity—of the thousands of men once able to wave, to shout, who would never come sailing out of the mists. As I stood thus alone as on a mountain top, in an ecstasy of conflict, the band which I had not noticed broke into the national anthem O Canada and I found myself crying .... Then I hurried down. The Olympic was warping in. Gangways were ready. There was no time for tears, with a paper waiting two thousand miles away for words on the wires.

Fine organization was evident and great work was done by transport officers and railroad officials in disembarking these thousands of returning soldiers and moving them by special trains to their homes across the length and breadth of the Dominion. But bunglings and delays occurred, both at Halifax and also at Quebec City where redistributing took place. About these we wrote, several times scurrying to Quebec to report a blockage. It was perhaps inevitable in bringing back such an army that there should be miscarriages. But Chambers and I, through the newspapers we represented, played a considerable part in keeping slackness in check and in achieving good treatment.

Among the transports arriving were hospital ships, not laden with fit men climbing the rigging to cheer but with cargoes of wounded and broken men and of soldiers whose minds had given way, at least temporarily. Not a hospital ship arrived without its complement of mental cases who were led off under guard. Possibly the percentage was small, but it was a phase of the War toll of which little was heard.

A hospital ship, the Northland, arrived on Christmas Day, 1918, with nearly a thousand men. It docked but did not disembark them. Right on the threshold of Canada the invalided soldiers were held until the evening of December 26 because a case of smallpox was suspected on board. That was bitter, if necessary treatment, and they came ashore to a chorus of grievances. “Rotten” was the mildest epithet applied to the food. “Not fit for dogs” was the general refrain. Plates were allegedly not washed between table sittings. Accusation was made that the ship was verminous. Men swarmed around us charging overcrowding, saying there was only one bath on board. Some held up their hands to show the dirt.

The rank and file, they exclaimed savagely, were kept in the stinking below-decks while officers and their ladies returning from England paraded in reserved comfort. Their ultimate grievance was the Christmas dinner. It had, they said, been fat pork; and they had had to fight for it, as usual.

Later we went through the men’s quarters and found them odorous, dirty and overcrowded.

Chambers and I sent despatches to Toronto that were picked up and carried across Canada by the Press Association. Indignation grew and within a week an inquiry was begun at Ottawa before Mr. Justice Hodgins. This cost the Government $100,000, for the ship had to be held, the crew examined and soldier witnesses brought from all over the country. It resulted, however, in a big change in the transporting of soldiers, especially in hospital ships.

Earlier we had described slowness in handling another hospital ship, the Araguaya, and last-minute scrambling to collect railroad cars to convoy the men, many of them sick and wounded, some of them cot cases. These were held on deck, armed guards blocking the gangways, for more than three hours in a chill wind while trains were made up.

Thus, constituting ourselves spokesmen of the returning soldiers, we kept the authorities on their toes. If troops were delayed in stepping ashore to touch the soil they were so eager to tread, if a train was late, if there were blunders in documentation, if congestion arose or the slightest hitch in handling a ship-load, we wrote of it. We two reporters were the Power of the Press and we wielded it lustily at Halifax on behalf of an army. Little escaped our eager eyes and ears, especially Arthur’s, who had an X-ray faculty for discovering official weakness. Representing The Telegram, he felt that he had a special mission to make Ottawa sit up and take notice. He did. We both did, merrily, and had more fun than two dictators. Officials were sensitive to every word we wrote and it was all on the side of righteousness.

This, however, was only part of our task. We wrote reams of human interest copy about returning battalions. On every ship we sought interviews with generals, Victoria Cross winners, escaped prisoners of war and other heroes. Few evaded us who had done and dared or suffered. Invariably we were welcome. Toronto soldiers particularly, delighted with this first home contact, greeted us as friends. Only once, when we jointly approached a famous airman, his chest a rainbow of decorations, were we snubbed. And highly. It did not bother us. We ran off like good boys and found others more amiable.

One who remains in the memory was Major-General Victor Williams of the Canadian Cavalry. He had been for nearly three years a prisoner of war in a German strafe camp and seemed embittered and broken when we spoke to him. But he made a fine recovery once he got home and was in time appointed Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, a post he still holds.

Months later, in August, 1919, during the visit of the Prince of Wales to Halifax, Chambers and I had the good fortune to be the first Canadian citizens to welcome the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Corps, the late General Sir Arthur Currie, five years to the month from the time he had left his Vancouver home to win the fame that is his. No simple soldier could have been more cordial than he as he came out of his stateroom on the Caronia at seven o’clock in the morning and put his arms around our shoulders as he towered over us.

“He is a giant of a man,” my despatch said, “not as soft-looking or as portly as his photographs would make him appear, but he has a good-humoured jowl and kindly mouth. His eyes are clear and gentle and his fresh, healthy face lacks wrinkles. He has the look of a Presbyterian minister with a touch of humour in his make-up, rather than that of a great general who has just come through the world’s greatest war.”

The return to Canada of one of the most striking soldiers the War had disclosed was indeed a peculiar one. If it had not been for a couple of Toronto reporters, he might well have wondered if he were back in the Dominion whose divisions he had commanded so brilliantly in France. There were no cheering crowds, no brass bands, no flags, no speeches. There were the usual officers, the usual officials, the usual kind-hearted women who attended at all times and in all seasons for months to make the returning soldiers comfortable. There was the vastness of the clearing dépôt and the air was chilly. That was how Currie came home.

There was not a soul to welcome him specially, save the pair of us.

True, he held in his hands a sheaf of telegrams, and the hour was early, still—if he had been George Young coming back from winning the Catalina Island swim, a Diamond Sculls victor returning from the Henley Regatta, or Clarke Gable or Claudette Colbert of the movies arriving on a holiday, there would have been crowds. The absence of warmth at the wharf-side has never been explained.

The big man in khaki with the blaze of ribbons on his chest did not seem to mind. If he did, he gave no sign as he gripped us almost affectionately by the arms, as if to assure himself that this was Canada. “What can I say?” he said. “What can I say?” And his voice was husky.

“What does it feel like to be back, after five years?” we asked him somewhat lamely.

“It is wonderful, wonderful,” and tears filled his eyes. “These messages from old comrades,” and he held up the telegrams, “they make me quite homesick.”

Of plans for the future, he said, he had none. And when we mentioned the charges against him which Sir Sam Hughes, former Minister of Militia and Defence, had made in the House of Commons, he merely said, “I have no wish to enter into a controversy with Sam Hughes.”

It was Sunday morning. There was a reception later at the South Terminal (station) to which Currie drove through deserted streets. Here were not more than a hundred people and a guard of honour. Lieutenant-Governor McCallum Grant of Nova Scotia greeted him. Mayor Parker of Halifax read an address of welcome and presented him with a piece of silver plate. But we two reporters felt that something of history had been missed—which we happened to capture—when there was not more fitting welcome right on board ship. Canada should have come to Currie and not Currie to Canada.

Of course, Halifax was very excited about the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness was perhaps as big a personality morsel as the city could swallow at one time. He was my own job just then, Currie’s arrival being merely an early morning interlude. In his royal wake I was to spend during the next few years an aggregate of nearly six months.