A Guest of the Kaiser the Plain Story of a Lucky Soldier

re, when it was first suggested that I become a lecturer,I was terrified at the prospect and would much rather have gone "Over the Top" in an attack than face an audience. I didnot make myself into a lecturer; I was just "wished" on to the public platform. My first month on tour was one continual roundof terror and stage-fright. How I survived, or what I said in mylectures, I do not know. The authorities, however, seemed to be pleased with my efforts and soon I was placed on the staff of the Recruiting Committee for Ontario.In five months I recruited over twelve hundred men for the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. During the same period my lectures inspired many of the people at home to form a numberof societies for sending relief to the boys who were still suffering in German prison camps. Later, when the United States came into the war I was sent across the border to lecture for various patriotic causes.I have been on the staff of the National Council of Defence,the Red Cross Society, the Military Y.M.C.A., the MunitionsBoard and on various Chautauqua circuits. During two of the Liberty Loan campaigns I had the good fortune to be instrumental in selling more than seven million dollars worth of Liberty Bonds.I am told that I have raised half a million dollars for the Red Cross and about two hundred thousand dollars for the Y.M.C.A. military funds. On my various lecture tours I have been from coast to coast, both in the United States and in Canada, and at the time of writing am still "carrying on". Practically every day since I commenced lectuing, I have been urged to put in the form of a book the story of my experiences while "Over There". At last it is done. I have written the storyand told of incidents as they happened to me. The narrative is, therefore, one of my own personal experiences. Many times I have longed to tell the story not only of my experiences in the war, but also those of my two brothers. There were three of us,I being the eldest. When the war began my two brothers were aged respectively fifteen and seventeen. All three of us were under the age limit for military service, yet we determined to getto the Front. We all three managed to do so. David, the second boy, and myself, said that we were nineteen and after some little trouble were accepted. David was killed in action at the age of twenty, during the storming of Lens by the Canadian troops on July 4th, 1917.Albert, the third boy, being only fifteen, was not allowed to join the army, so he "attached" himself by the simple method of stowing himself away on board one of the transports that carried Canadian troops to Europe. Eventually he reached the Front and saw plenty of hard fighting. He is, at the time of writing, just nineteen years of age, yet he now wears chevrons on his uniform indicating that he has been four years on active service. Having read many of the various war books that have been published since the outbreak of the war, I feel that my efforts, here set forth, are indeed poor, but if my reader can find something new and interesting in my narrative, and if the many friends that I had the pleasure of meeting while on my lecture tours, who really inspired this effort, will only look upon my work with a kindly eye, I shall feel that, after all, this bookhas not been written in vain. A.G. Toronto, December1,1918No illustrations included.