4 QUESTIONS to men who have not enlisted ENLIST TODAY, The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London. Derby and London: Bemrose & Sons Ltd, circa 1915. William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library.

"I had to do it. I couldn't live any longer on such terms with myself as I have been since the Lusitania was sunk. When I pictured those dead women and children floating about in that pittiless, ice-cold water, well at first I just felt a sort of nausau with life. I wanted to get out of the world where such a thing could happen—shake its accursed dust from my feet. Then I knew I had to go. I am going for my own sake to save my soul alive. It will shrink to something small and mean and lifeless if I don't go. That would be worse than blindness or mutilation or any of the things I feared.

It's not death I fear—I told you that long ago. One can pay too high a price for mere life, little sister. There's so much hideousness in this war—I've got to go and help wipe it out of the world. I'm going to fight for the beauty of life Rilla-my-Rilla—that is my duty. There may be a higher duty, perhaps—but that is mine. I owe life and Canada that, and I've got to pay it."

— Walter speaking to Rilla upon enlisting in the War. L. M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside. NY: Stokes, 1921, p. 161.