Ever since the war ended in Europe I have been hoping for opportunity to visit Canada. My purpose was deeper than mere desire to renew association with old Canadian friends. I have wanted to come here so that I might, in the heart of their homeland, pay humble tribute to the soldierly virtues of those wartime comrades and, from a more personal viewpoint, give expression to my gratitude for their loyal and faithful adherence through long years of war, to the principle and substance of allied unity.

It is beyond the power of any man to add to the luster of the military reputation established by the brave men and women of Canada who served with me in Europe. They have written their own proud record in your hearts and in those of all men wherever freedom is venerated. But it is only simple justice to state that in an allied force numbering in the millions, and in which courage and fortitude were so much the rule as to be taken for granted, assignment of vital battle objectives to the Canadians brought to the High Command only feelings of satisfaction and of confidence. The 1st Canadian Army under General Crerar will always be remembered and respected as an invaluable member of the allied team.

No man could command a force in which your Canadians were included without feelings of deep humility and lasting pride. Because I had that privilege, those men were, for many months, my Canadians, too, and no one can take from me the place they hold in my affection and admiration.

Memory goes back to my first contacts with them in Britain, when they were commanded by General McNaughton. That summer they carried out the memorable Dieppe operation, in which one of those freak chances of war resulted in a casualty list of saddening proportions. Yet let no one tell you that the Dieppe affair was devoid of valuable results. I know of no other single incident that did so much to confirm convictions that the coastal fortifications in France could be successfully breached on a large scale. Moreover, out of that operation many battle leaders derived valuable lessons that were applied later to the amphibious operations in the Mediterranean, and still later, when we lunged across the Channel for the final invasion.

Canadians first came under my command in Sicily. From that moment onward, we served together in Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and, finally, in Germany. Other stirring pictures come back to me. The Royal Canadian Navy, pressing home the assault against the Normandy beaches! The bold pilots of the Royal Canadian Fir Force riding herd in the skies and covering the battle path of their comrades on the ground all the way from the beach to the Elbe. Great fighters, in great events! They lived history - a bright page of history.

I think I can best express my feelings toward my Canadian comrades by saying that I am truly grateful to the fathers and mothers who sent those men and women to serve in the Allied Command in Europe, and equally grateful to all who, here in their homeland, supported them unstinted throughout the years of conflict.

Canada points, with justifiable pride to a dozen directions in which she made vitally important contributions to allied victory. In carrying on the great air training program, in providing mountains of munitions, in convoying ships through seas infested with submarines, in sending needed cargoes of foodstuffs - in all these and many more your record needs no embellishment from me.

Throughout this war, our two nations have been drawn together in planning and producing for a common cause. It has been a cooperation which seemed as natural as it was inevitable. Our nations are such good friends that we take neighborly collaboration as a matter of course. During the two years when you were at war and we were not, some twelve thousand American citizens crossed your border to enter the armed forces of your country. After the Jap attacked us and the European Axis declared war, 26,000 individuals of Canadian birth entered our own armed forces. These reciprocal acts seem to me spontaneous evidence of the friendship that must forever exist between our two people.

There is other evidence of effective war cooperation between our two countries. Under the far-sighted leadership of Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, and of our alte President Roosevelt, common problems were solved by the devotion to them of common resources.

Among these were the defense of Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces, the development of an air route across Canada to Alaska - since known as the Northwest Staging Route - an air route over Hudson Bay, and the overland Alaskan Highway. A common readiness to venture boldly resulted in the initially hazardous airway across Labrador, Iceland and Greenland which, in a few short years, has made air travel to Europe a commonplace. Cooperation exploited for war purposes the great ports of embarkation at Halifax and Prince Rupert in British Columbia.

We, in the United States, keenly realize that success in these and other vital projects demanded generosity and many concessions on the part of the Canadian Government. As a soldier-citizen of your neighboring country, it is a great privilege to express to you deep and lasting gratitude. The allied victory in Europe stands as a monument to teamwork and to the results of practical understanding between nations. Nowhere was that teamwork more effective than here in our two homelands. Even customs duties were relaxed and the freest exchange of personnel, materiel and all types of commodities was permitted across the international border. Through these means the efficient prosecution of the war was immeasurably increased. As a direct consequence hostilities were shortened!

In addition to Canada’s contribution to victory in Europe, our joint operational effort extended to other sections of the globe. A Canadian combat team participated in the Aleutians campaign. Over a long period of time squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force and units of the Royal Canadian Navy operated jointly with United States forces in the North Pacific. Hundreds of American soldiers were trained in Canadian schools during the war, and this practice was pursued, also, in the opposite direction.

In this reminiscent review of the war years, I have refrained from mentioning until now one specific instance when my attention, as a commander, was intensively directed toward the Canadian sector. The first Canadian Army covered itself with honor in the beachhead in the bitter attack beginning February 8, 1945, and in the operation across the Rhine. But the instance in which it produced, from my viewpoint, its greatest climax was when it undertook the hazardous mission of clearing the Scheldt Estuary, key to the great port of Antwerp. Although we had already taken the city and port, they were useless to us while the Germans commanded the approaches. We had to work that port - final victory came directly to depend upon its early usefulness. When Field Marshal Montgomery turned the task over to my old friend, General Crerar, and the Canadians, I knew the task would be brilliantly and expeditiously executed.

It is a great accomplishment such as that one which I like to remember. The end of Nazism was in clear view when the first ship moved unmolested up the Scheldt. Yet retrospective satisfaction is saddened always by the memory of brave men whose lives have been spent in the victory, of gallant soldiers whose priceless courage has bought, for us, the peace. There is no way to pay to them and their loved ones an equal devotion, except as we strive as unselfishly and gallantly to maintain the peace as they strove to win it.

The tragic, turbulent years of war ended last May in Germany, last August in the Pacific. Now the victors have set themselves a new and even greater task - to work out a formula and a practical procedure intended to smooth international frictions to find a way to banish war forever from the world.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. Yet there is one thing to say on the credit side - victory required a mighty manifestation of the most ennobling of the virtues of man - faith, courage, fortitude, sacrifice; if we can only hold that example before our eyes; moreover, if we can remember that the international cooperation then so generously displayed points the sure way to the success of the United Nations Organization, then the war can never be regarded as a total deficit. I have heard people say that wartime unity was based only on necessity - that now when necessity is past, we may expect differences which were forgotten in the urgency of a common fear! But the falsity of that contention is clear, because the necessity for cooperation has not passed. Nations that joined together to defeat ruthless enemies have even greater reason to remain united for the peaceful settlement of their differences lest new Hitler’s rise to throw the world into a chaos more awful than the shattered countries of Europe present today. That is what we squarely face!

Our two nations have lived as peaceful neighbors so long that in our own relationships we have totally forgotten the meaning of fears and lusts for conquest that bred the war from which we have just emerged. The ripeness of our friendship is apparent for all to see in a border which marks separate sovereignty, but binds together rather than divides. The secret is nothing other than mutual understanding and respect.

We must not over-simplify the problem. We must not delude ourselves into believing that all nations will easily achieve this broad result or that nothing more is demanded than verbal adherence to beautiful generality. But it can be achieved if every nation realizes that its very survival may depend on its earnest cooperation in the peaceful settlement of disputes. All must learn that in cooperation there is giving as well as receiving. The one that eternally gives and does not receive will eventually exhaust itself. In the contrary case the recipient becomes nothing but the object of another’s bounty. To cooperate we must give and take in a spirit of mutual, sympathetic understanding. Our two countries have long done it - the United Nations did it in war. The practice must continue and must become universal. When that is done the fortifications that bristle along borders throughout the world will speedily come tumbling down and from the hearts of populations will be lifted age-old burdens of fear.

Another mistake we must not make is to assume that this crusade for promoting mutual understanding can be successfully conducted exclusively by others - by the world’s statesmen and political leaders. Each of us, however humble, has a part to play. Governments may wisely deal with the problems which rise in our concerted search for peace, but in the end it will be the citizens of all countries who must outlaw war. Until the peoples of the world understand and respect the interests of their neighbors, the victory will elude us. Until the peoples of the world embrace the democratic belief that the dignity of the individual is the basis of the success of nations, the world will not find an enduring peace.

I venture to speak of these things because it was my lot to be intimately associated with a great cooperative effort in Europe. Success was ours because each nation was willing to submerge what might have appeared to be its own narrow interests in the common cause. A bright factor in future prospects lies in the fact that since the fighting ended there have been no futile arguments over the part that any particular one of the United Nations played. Just as each was necessary to victory, all must march together toward peace. Positive action is required. Attack, not defense, is indicated!

We have come through a momentous experience together. If it has been glorious in its achievement, it has been tragic in the lives we had to spend for success. White crosses, standing in regimented clusters throughout a thousand leagues of foreign soil, forever mark the path of victory and the price your nation and mine and our friends have paid for survival. They cry out for peace, they challenge democracy today. I pray, and I firmly believe, that in meeting that challenge, your nation and mine will always find themselves in the forefront of the charge.