That winter and the summer which followed, and the period which carried
him into the spring of 1916, was materially a triumphal procession for
Wes Thompson. Tommy's forecast of the war's ending had fallen short as
so many other forecasts did. The war went on, developing its own
particular horrors as it spread. But the varying tides of war, and the
manifold demands of war, bestowed upon Vancouver a heaping measure of
prosperity, and Vancouver, in the person of its business men, was rather
too far from the sweat and blood of the struggle to be distracted by the
issues of that struggle from its own immediate purposes. Business men
were in business to make money. They supported the war effort. Every one
could not go to the trenches. Workers were as necessary to victory as
fighters. People had to be fed and clothed. The army had to be fed and
clothed, transported and munitioned. And the fact that the supplying and
equipping and transporting was highly profitable to those engaged in
such pursuits did not detract from the essentially patriotic and
necessary performance of these tasks.
The effect on Vancouver was an industrial rejuvenation. Money flowed in
all sorts of channels hitherto nearly dry. A lot of it flowed to Wesley
Thompson in exchange for Summit cars. Thompson was like many other men
in Vancouver. He was very busy. The business stood on its feet by virtue
of his direction. If he dropped it and rushed off to the war--well there
was no lack of men, men who had no particular standing, men who could
not subscribe to war charities, to Dominion war-bond issues. There was
plenty of man-power. There was never a surplus of brain-power. Business
was necessary. So a man with a live, thriving business was fighting in
his own way--doing his bit to keep the wheels turning--standing stoutly
behind the fellow with a bayonet. And a lot of them let it go at that. A
lot of them saw no pressing need to don khaki and let everything else go
to pot. A lot of them were so intent upon making the most of their
opportunities that they never brought their innermost thoughts out on
the table and asked themselves point-blank: "Should I go? Why shouldn't
I?" And there were some who saw dimly--as the months slid by with air
raids and submarine sinkings and all the new, terrible devices of death
and destruction which transgressed the old usages of war--there were
some who were troubled without knowing why. There were men who hated
bloodshed, who hated violence, who wished to live and love and go their
ways in peace, but who began uneasily to question whether these things
they valued were of such high value after all.
And Wes Thompson was one of these. Deep in him his emotions were
stirring. The old tribal instinct--which sent a man forth to fight for
the tribe no matter the cause--was functioning under the layer of stuff
that civilization imposes on every man. His reason gainsaid these
stirrings, those instinctive urgings, but there was a stirring and it
troubled him. He did not desire to die in a trench, nor vanish in
fragments before a bursting shell, nor lie face to the stars in No Man's
Land with a bayonet hole in his middle. He would not risk these
fatalities for any such academic idea as saving the world for democracy.