300,000 men at the front, we will send word across the Atlantic-We are coming, still 300,000 more."

(5) The latest movement is the raising of funds by popular contributions for the purpose of donating machine guns for the troops. One old man contributed the price of a gun, $750. 'I am too old to go, but they tell me that one machine gun is worth fifty men; so I went to the savings bank and drew out my savings to buy one.' In Glencoe, Ont. (a village of 800 people) the citizens were raising the price of a gun. John Stevenson, a young man of twenty-seven, married, three children, could not contribute. He went to the recruiting station and enlisted and is now in training, hoping that he will be able to man the gun from his own home town.

These passages are culled from one issue of a paper in a small Canadian city and could be duplicated in almost every other paper in the Dominion. They indicate something of the spirit which prevails in Canada to-day, a spirit which is not, as outsiders may be tempted to think, an outgrowth of the present war, but a spirit which has been latent in Canada for years and required only the emergency to call it forth.

In order to understand the Canadian attitude of mind, which induces them to pour out their resources on foreign soil for the first time in their history, and to do it at a truly great sacrifice, we must know something about the transformation of Canadian national life in recent years. The past few decades had been the most prosperous in all Canadian history. At one stroke Canada gained faith in herself and became conscious of the marvellous possibilities of her future, when she would have become the granary of the Empire and taken her place beside the United States as one of the great nations of the world. She had passed from a local to an imperial consciousness; and, with her eyes on the future, she developed her natural resources, encouraged immigration, and promoted manufactures and trade. She built not navies, forts, and armies, but transcontinental railways, grain-elevators, factories, and working-men's houses, with the conviction that in the greater Empire that is to be these would play a vital part. She talked of imperial federation, encouraged preferential tariffs within the Empire, rejected reciprocity with the United States,

rejected also temporarily the Borden Government's plans for active participation in imperial defence. Whatever we may think of the solution she gave to these various problems, we must recognise that Canada was for the first time grappling seriously with imperial and worldwide interests. We have in them an indication of a new mental attitude on the part of the Canadian people, whose interests, once limited to purely local affairs, were now extended to the wider concerns of the Empire as a whole and of their own place in the world's future. Only the Canadian-born, or those well acquainted with the new national spirit through years of residence in Canada, can really understand the enthusiasm of the Canadian people as they turned their backs on the days of their apprenticeship and faced a future so full of the promise of national greatness.

Canada had at length become conscious of herself. Her internal prosperity and expansion had given her faith in her destiny. Her part in imperial affairs had broadened her horizon and set before her the ideal of a place to be filled in the British Empire, in which also she had unbounded faith. The first opportunity given for the expression of her new life and interest was the South African War. In the following years the various imperial conferences bound all parts of the Empire more closely together. The reciprocity campaign in 1911 drew the cords which bind her to the Mother-Land still tighter. And, in spite of its defeat in 1913, the Navy Bill was the most significant step, from an imperial standpoint, which Canada had taken in her history. It is only fair to Canada to say that the defeat of the bill gave to the world a false impression of the true Canadian position. All parties, even the Liberals who opposed the bill, were unanimous in the conviction that Canada ought now, and to an increasing extent in the future, to bear her full share of the burden of imperial defence. The battle was fought over the means, not the end in view; and, before an agreement could be reached, the present war was upon us.

When it came, Canada had a wider vision, higher ideals, a more vital national life, and a closer contact with the rest of the Empire than ever before. She was now in a position to feel at home in a world-enterprise.

She could sympathise with Belgium, whose rights were so ruthlessly downtrodden, and feel no incongruity in sending her sons to die upholding them. Above all she was touched by the spectacle of Britain nobly struggling for peace, only at last to be dragged into a war that is not hers, with everything to lose and nothing to gain. Fifty or even twenty-five years ago Canada would have taken a passive interest and pursued her peaceful way. To-day she throws her soul into the conflict, because she is a different nation.

But we must go deeper than the new national, imperial, and world-consciousness to find what is after all the mainspring of Canada's action. Indignation at the bleeding of Belgium, an insistence that the treaties of nations shall be scrupulously regarded, sympathy with the British struggle for democracy, a determination that might must not rule, the romantic desire for participation in world-enterprises-while all of these are determining factors, none of these alone, nor even all of them combined, is sufficient to account for Canada's sacrifice. The United States on the whole feels these emotions just as keenly as Canada does, yet she remains neutral. There is a more fundamental cause which ought to be the most obvious, yet is the most apt to be overlooked, namelya devotion to British interests which results from Canada's long unbroken connexion with the Mother-Country.

Canadians have felt for years that they depend for their national existence on Great Britain. For generations, whether right or wrong, there has been a widespread feeling in Canada that the various provinces would long ago have been absorbed as states in the American federation, were it not for their attachment to Great Britain. The feeling doubtless originated in the attack upon Canada during the American Revolution and in the attempted annexation in 1812-14, and has been fostered by the settlement of the various boundary disputes, in each of which Canada felt the United States took the lion's share. So late as 1903, intense resentment was felt throughout Canada on the occasion of the settlement of the Alaskan boundary dispute, the sting of which has, however, been largely forgotten in view of the long-standing friendship between the two peoples. This feeling of her own weakness, and the real or supposed

danger of being overshadowed and finally absorbed by her great neighbour, drove Canada all the more closely to Great Britain. S. E. Moffett concludes his book, 'The Americanization of Canada,' with the words: 'The English-speaking Canadians protest that they will never become Americans-they are already Americans without knowing it.' While this may be true of such external things as dress and customs in general, it must not be applied to Canadian patriotism. In national sentiment Canadians are British to the core, and view with alarm anything which seems to encroach upon the ties which bind them to Great Britain.

This became apparent on two important occasions. In the discussions about Confederation the proposed union of the provinces was presented as the only alternative to union with the States. The words of G. E. Cartier are typical: 'The matter resolves itself into this; either we must obtain British North American Confederation or be absorbed in an American Confederation.'* The Canadian people chose the former. Fifty years later, they thought the same issue was presented again, only in a different garb-the reciprocity compact with the United States. Here again they showed a decided preference for Britain. The national election of 1911 was fought out on this one issue; and a more heated election perhaps never took place in Canada. There can be no doubt that what tipped the scale so decidedly against reciprocity was the fact that Canadian national pride was touched, and they feared a severance of their British relations. Among various utterances by the American press and American public men, the most fatal was that of Speaker Champ Clark:

'I am in favor of the reciprocity treaty because I hope to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions clear to the North Pole.'

Canadians will readily grant that many worse things might befall them, but the fact remains that this is decidedly what they do not want. Their historical connexions, their sympathies, their ideals are British, not

• Parliamentary Debates on Confederation,' p. 55.

American. The result was that a storm was raised on the Canadian side of the border. Among several reasons against reciprocity issued by the Canadian National League is Article 8: Because the agreement, as proposed, would weaken the ties which bind Canada to the Empire. .. At a non-party mass-meeting held in Massey Hall, Toronto, March 9, 1911, presided over by Sir William Mortimer Clark, the chairman said: 'We are at the parting of the ways. We must either choose the way to Washington or the way to the great Empire beyond the sea.' The opinion of the majority of Canadians was briefly expressed in these sentences. In the election, life-long party affiliations were broken; and many men, setting their patriotism above their financial interests, cast their vote, as they believed, for the Empire. The net result was a political landslide in which the Liberal party, which advocated reciprocity, was defeated by an overwhelming majority. Thousands of Liberals helped to block the road to Washington.'

Let the people of Great Britain have no misgivings; our centre of gravity lies within the Empire. However strong the feeling of friendship with any other nation may become, that deeper love which grips the heart is reserved for only one-our Mother. For this, other nations must not blame us, for Great Britain has been immeasurably more to us than all others combined. On the other hand, the message of the reciprocity campaign is not that Canadians had any ill-will toward the United States. But it did show conclusively, that, if in time of peace the Canadian people could become so alarmed over a commercial treaty with a kindred people with whom they enjoyed an unbroken friendship of a hundred years, simply because in the dim future it might sever their British relations, then henceforth the imperial tie was so strong that any danger threatening the Empire would call the Dominion to the support of Britain. The reciprocity campaign of 1911 was a forerunner of Canada's action in 1914.

The direct result, therefore, of the close attachment to Great Britain, ever since the days of Wolfe's victory at Quebec, and of Canada's dependence on the

*Reciprocity Pamphlets, 1911.