加拿大总理哈珀在纪念一战爆发100周年仪式英语演讲稿

Thank you, Shelly, for that kind introduction.

Thank you to Suzanne Sarault for serving as our emcee today.

Greetings to Chief of Defence Staff General Lawson, to Chief Warrant Officer West, toambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps, to my colleagues from the Parliament ofCanada, Royal Galipeau and Pierre Lemieux, members of the Canadian Armed Forces, honouredveterans and families, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

As Shelly said, a century has passed now since the dull roar of the guns of August was firstheard and all across Europe, the lights of peace faded.

This great conflict on the other side of an ocean need not have involved us.

But then, as now, when our friends and the values we share with them are threatened,Canadians do not turn away.

So it was that in 1914, Canadian and Newfoundland volunteers – Newfoundland being then aseparate Dominion – accepted this call to arms as a duty.

At the end of the summer of 1914, Canadians left behind factories, fields, forests and fisheries.

They left their homes, shops, offices and schools.

Men by the tens of thousands signed up to fight.

Men like Leo Clarke, Frederick Hall and Robert Shankland, who all lived on Pine Street inWinnipeg.

Men like brothers Bernard and Eric Ayre and their cousins Gerald and Wilfrid of St. John’s,Newfoundland.

Men like George Vanier of Montréal, a young lawyer who had considered joining the priesthoodbefore hearing the call of duty.

And women like Beatrice McNair from Vancouver, one of 2,500 nursing sisters who servedoverseas.

The first Canadians left for Europe that October.

Many thought they’d be home for Christmas.

Some of them actually worried that they’d get over there too late to do their part.

As we all know, they were terribly, terribly wrong.

Though the commitment to war was uncertain, over 600,000 Canadians fought to defendour country, only eight million strong at the time.

The mud, the blood and the sacrifices that marked those years left more than a third of theseCanadians dead or wounded.

Forgive me if I do not dwell on these numbers, the bitter harvest of suffering and death.

We have had a hundred years to contemplate this war.

Much has been written on this subject.

And yet, what it means to have lived in muck and disease, to fight through mud deep enoughto drown a man, to lose thousands of lives in a single day to gain what could be measured inyards.

The sense of these things still eludes us.

We can only imagine their courage, their fear, the devotion they had to King, to country, andto comrades that drove them over the top to take the fight to the enemy time and time again.

So let us pass on and dwell instead on what they achieved.

Though inexperienced, these young men of 1914 were determined.

By the time the war was in its final days, they were admired by the allies and dreaded by theenemy.

They were called the shock troops of the British Empire.