BX April 22, 1916
To Brantford Young Men Who Should Now be in Khaki
Young men, a few words to you in confidence:
For many months now the efforts that have been adopted in order to secure your enlistment should, I think, make you think very seriously. Should they not also make you blush? That it has been necessary to resort to so many devices shows that there is something wrong. Is it with you? What is this something? Is it that you have no consciousness of strict accountability to your Empire, or is it that you merely decline to be troubled by anything that concerns the present war? You are young and virile, the majority of you having no special ties that compel you to hold back, and yet you evade your responsibility and shirk your duty. Is this anything to be proud of? Is it not rather something of which you should be very much ashamed?
In analyzing your character – and it is those having no special ties to whom I speak – I cannot believe that you have lost the true elements of chivalry or that you are devoid of anything that makes a noble manhood, and yet are you now discharging your sacred duty? Or are you accounted guilty of a woeful negligence?
It is most deplorable to know that some of you rarely if ever make yourselves acquainted with the events taking place in the theatre of war while many others or you – though you read of ruthless destruction the slaughter of innocents, fair womanhood outraged, and the wholesale sacking of historic cities, yet maintain an undisturbed calm, and go about your business or pleasure as if these things belonged to the imagination only.
The horrors revealed in the thrilling drama “The Battle Cry of Peace” reflects only to a small degree the atrocities and the devastation in Belgium and Serbia and yet, young men, you fail to act.
Some of you may say that you have a conscientious objection, but are you true to yourself in this, or is our “conscientious objection” merely a cloak for cowardice? I am not asserting that it is, but merely asking the question, is it? As a stimulus you might read Ruskin’s lecture on “War,” found in his “Crown of Wild Olive.”
The 125th Battalion is in need of at least fifty men, and as the present is the opportune time, assert your manhood and enlist. You are wanted, you are needed, and you will be made welcome.
In this, the nation’s hour of crisis, there goes out an insistent call for men.
Will you respond?
Give us men!
Strong and stalwart ones!
Men whom highest hope inspires
Men whom purest honor fires,
Men who trample self beneath them,
Men who make their county wreath them
As her noble sons
Worthy of their sires!
Men who never shame their mothers,
Men who never fail their brothers,
True, however false are others!
Give us men, I say again,
Give us men.
A.E. Elliott
BX July 28, 1919
Corporal Elliott at Wesley Church – “Fighting Parson” Left Brantford with 125th and Served in Ranks
Sunday evening Corporal (Rev.) A.E. Elliott delivered a very striking and interesting talk on his impressions in France, and with regard to the religious side of our fighting men, to a large congregation in the Wesley Methodist Church, city. Rev. A.E. Elliott was an ordained, unmarried Methodist minister in the Welland district church before he enlisted in January, 1916 as a private in the 125th Battalion in Brantford. He stayed with this battalion, being promoted to a corporal, until the battalion was split up into drafts, when he and 50 others were sent to the P.P.C.L.I. in France. Corporal Elliott volunteered to revert to a private to go with this draft to France. At Amiens he was wounded on August 12, 1918 receiving gunshot wound in the hand, and had to go to hospital and to England. After being in various hospitals there he was sent to the C.C.D. at Seaford, when he was when the armistice was signed.
He was put on the staff of the regimental depot at Witley camp after this, and stayed there until orders came through for him to be sent back to Canada. Two weeks ago he came back on the Carmania to his home in Brantford, and he is now living at the home of his sister, Mrs. F. Scattergood, 6 Lida Avenue. His brother, Harry Elliott Sr., who is now back and living at his home, 66 park Avenue, city enlisted with the 84th Battalion, and went to France with the 75th. A nephew, Harry Elliott Jr., also enlisted and went as a private with the 125th Battalion and was transferred to the 1st Battalion in France. Two married sisters live in Brantford, Mrs. F. Scattergood, 6 Lida Avenue and Mrs. C.E. Smith, 4 Glanville Avenue. His mother and younger sister, Miss G. Elliott, have lived in Toronto since the death of his father, Mr. D. Elliott, in January 1919.
He was appointed by the recent Hamilton conference in June to the pastorate of Wellandport Methodist church, Welland County, his duties to commence on the first Sunday in August 1919.
One of the first to welcome back Corporal Elliott, was a fellow comrade, Fred Oldham, from Paris. When everyone despaired of saving Fred’s life, Elliott carried him back to the dressing station, thus having proper attention paid to the man and so saving his life.
Sunday evening Mr. Elliott spoke on the religious side of the men in the trenches, of their great faith and the comradeship amongst them, how men were true and noble there, doing away with all the petty smallness and carrying a large broad-minded religion, embracing all.
In France he had many opportunities of promotion, but turned them all down, as he considered he could do more good as a private soldier than as a chaplain.
