The question of Canadian loyalty is a difficult and delicate one to deal with. Generally speaking their sentiment is, as it should be "Canada first." After that I should say that to-day the very large majority of Canadians prefer the British connection to the American, mostly from inherited prejudices, and a little because, until lately, the attitude of the latter towards the Dominion has been a trifle too condescending. If you particularize the French Canadians, the answer is not quite so simple. The stereotyped answer is, of course, that they naturally hold by their French traditions, but that you may always depend on them to be loyal to the Union Jack as against the Stars and Stripes, because the priests well know that the hold they have over their parishioners would be immensely weakened, if not altogether loosened by annexation to the United States. This is very largely true (although the most fervent advocate of "annexation" I ever met was a French Canadian priest in Nova Scotia), but if you try to go deeper into the matter you run up against religious and racial differences. The stereotyped answer is considerably modified; for instance, when you raise the question of the Dual Language, and politicians are much influenced by the probability that anything they may say will be repeated in the ears of constituents. men in Montreal will point out that two-thirds of the population of that city is French, and that two-thirds of its wealth is in the hands of the English section. You may draw whatever inference you please from this. education of the children is practically entirely in the hands of the priests, who can hardly inculcate a fervent loyalty to the anti-Clerical France of to-day. But the tricolor waves over their schools and public buildings, especially in Lower Canada, and you hear more of the panache blanc than

Business

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you do of the meteor flag of England in after-dinner speeches. A large employer of French labor in the Province of Quebec told me once that only some three dozen of his men volunteered for service with the South African contingents, adding significantly that none of their friends went down to the wharf to see them off. The scene was very different on their return, for the men had made themselves very popular with their English fellow soldiers and had been treated on terms of per fect camaraderie. The inborn French love of military glory no doubt helped to promote the enthusiasm of their friends and relations at home. The result is gratifying, but it is a matter for reflection that a somewhat violent twist of Fortune's wheel was required to bring it about.

An independent French-speaking Canada is an impossible dream, but an independent Canada is quite a different thing. The painter has not yet been cut; may, quite probably, not be cut during the present generation; but it has been pretty badly frayed. The feeling that Canadians should make their own treaties has been growing more and more acute in the Dominion. and it has even been suggested in London newspapers that Sir Mortimer Durand's successor at Washington should be a Canadian. If you ask one of them how he proposes to enforce those treaties he falls back eventually on the Monroe Doctrine, which is simply annexation writ large. I am not here to argue about the justice of the decisions in the matter of the Alaskan Boundary, or in that of the Newfoundland treaties, but I know full well that the general impression which those de cisions left on the minds of Canadians was that Great Britain was afraid of the United States, that whenever there might arise a conflict between the interests of the two powers in the North American Continent those of the Do

minion would have to go to the wall, so long as the arbitrament lay with the Mother of Parliaments.

Canada's contributions to Imperial Defence I am not including her services in the late war-are rather taking the line now of "relieving the Imperial Government of the expense of maintaining troops at Halifax and Esquimalt," and of dispensing with the services of the North Pacific Squadron. That is a very nice way of putting it, and doubtless it is a step towards the future development of an independent army and navy, but meanwhile it means another strand in the painter rubbed through. A long time must elapse before Canada can afford a standing army, a navy, a diplomatic corps of her own; she needs all her spare cash at present for industrial purposes, but she can afford to keep it there, because she is in the happy position of having two strings to her bow, the Mother Country, or, as an ultimate resort, the Monroe Doctrine.

North West Canada, sentiment apart, is already more American than English. What else can you expect, when there is nothing but an air-line between a country with five or six million inhabitants, and a country with eighty millions? They lead the same lives, worship the same God, talk the same language, play the same games. The reduction in postal rates, and consequent popularization of English periodical literature in Canada is a move in the right direction, but it is futile to suppose that it will wipe out the effect of the Alaskan boundary decision, or that it will even seriously diminish the sale of American books and newspapers. Let me illustrate what I mean.

I pick up an American ten-cent magazine, published in New York, and come across a few expressions such as these:

"Simoleons"; "start a rough house";

"wise guys"; "a husky mitt"; "the main squeeze of this burg.”

How many Englishmen could translate them at sight, even if they read them with the context? But almost any Canadian farmer, or immigrant of a few years' standing in the West, understands them with perfect ease, and is very likely in the habit of using them daily. The fact is that directly he lands in Canada an Englishman begins to learn a new language, and that this language is much more "American" than "English."

For one Canadian who could name the winner of last year's Derby there are dozens who could tell you off-hand the holder of the mile trotting record. Canadian race-meetings are held under the rule of an American Turf Club; American rinks curl annually at the great Canadian bonspiels; Canadian crews row for American championships on American waters; the best dogs in the State enter for the Manitoba Field Trials. A few years ago the number of Canadians settled on the south side of the border was computed at a million and a half. Is the ordinary Western farmer going to stop buying Sunday numbers of Chicago papers, or to cut off his subscription to New York "dime" magazines in order to read about county cricket, or football leagues, or the doings of Park Lane magnates? I trow not.

There are people who will say that all this has been going on for years, and that the late influx into the NorthWest will not appreciably affect the general results. I cannot agree with them any more than I can hold that the optimistic view of rapid and imperceptible absorption is final and incontestable. The annual immigration from the United States into Canada has increased by eight thousand per cent. in the last nine years. The percentage in the case of the North-West is certainly higher, for the reason that

three-quarters of these new arrivals settle there in preference to Lower Canada and British Columbia. Of the European immigrants only about onehalf come to Manitoba and the New Provinces. It must be that a movement of this kind should have farreaching results.

One of these results is already visible to any experienced eye. In speaking of the attitude of Americans towards Canadians, I implied a certain reservation by using the words "until lately." Nine years ago the leading grain exporters in New York and Chicago were, by their own confession, quite extraordinarily ignorant of the condition of things in Canada. Western Americans generally knew even less than the experts, because their leading newspapers were subsidized to tell astounding lies, with the object of diverting the flood of immigration to the Western States, and keeping it there. When American capitalists found it necessary that the tide should flow over into the Dominion the newspapers also found that they had to change their tone, or lose their advertisements. I do not suppose it even occurred to them to hesitate. They began at once to print sixteen-page sheets in crude colors, which bore about the same relation to the actual state of affairs as do the pictures outside a country circus to the performance going on within. The Canadian farmer was startled by this volte-face, and a trifle incredulous, but on the whole flattered.

Nor did the enterprise of the American land speculator end with the newspapers. He is probably more patriotic than the average Englishman, but he is not going to allow chauvinism to interfere with business, nor will he flick you in the face with the Stars and Stripes if that action is going to hinder him from selling you something. He started branch offices in Winnipeg

and elsewhere, coming over himself from Chicago, and St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Duluth, to establish them and to study the conditions of his new extension on the spot. In many cases he decided to remain, and began immediately, with that wonderful American versatility, to adapt himself to the ways of the country. You can see it in little things. I have watched one of them smoking a pipe; he would take it out of his mouth at brief intervals, blow a cloud of smoke, and put it back again; anybody could tell at a glance that he was a cigar smoker. Now, a few years ago, an Englishman producing a pipe in the "smoker" of a Pullman was quite likely to be ordered by the conductor to put it away. It is true that the statue of Liberty is a prominent object in New York harbor, and also that the smell of cigars at two for five cents ("two-fers," they are affectionately called) is more offensive to some people than an ordinary pipe. But "if you want to smoke you may smoke a cigar. We've no use for pipes here." It generally ended in the Englishman doing what he was told. The use of pipes, and the wearing of knickerbocker breeches and stockings, came over with golf, first into the Eastern States, then, more slowly, out West. But my American friend was in Canada, on business, and Canada is British, and so is pipe smoking, therefore he would learn to smoke a pipe. reasoning was not quite correct, but his intention was good, and he stuck to his pipe with a persistency that was sometimes pathetic. He gave up girding at British institutions, was probably honestly surprised to find out how much less there was to sneer at than he had been bred to believe. He discovered that the men he had to deal with were very good fellows, and they took to him at once. He became a member of a Canadian club, finding himself quite at home in the poker

His

room, and built his branch office, and is working there at the present moment. And he is only one of hundreds, or thousands, who are doing these things.

The Englishman at home says:

This is all very well, but your American lives next door, so to speak, we have the Atlantic to cross. Do you seriously maintain that it would have been a good thing for us, or for Canada, had we gone to war with the States over their irreducible minimum in such a case as that of Alaska or of Newfoundland? Would the game have been worth the candle? What do you expect us to do? You made a proposal about the reduction of certain rates of postage, and we have shown our willingness to meet you. more do you want?

What

Well, one answer to the first part of the argument is simple.

Cross the Atlantic. Numbers of Canadians are doing so year after year; they have less money than you, very often, and are at least as busy. If they can do it, why not you? The Canadian who has been in England almost invariably returns home more of an Anglophil than he was before he started. Go and return the call, instead of playing your everlasting lawn tennis at Homburg, or mobbing your sovereign at Marienbad. Go and shoot moose, and prairie chicken, by way of a change from red-deer and grouse; really hunting for chicken is more amusing than standing in a butt waiting for a line of beaters to drive your game up to you.

The second part of your remarks involves a certain amount of the petitio principii. You assume that the refusal of the "irreducible minimum" would inevitably have plunged us into war. My friend, until you have played poker with him, you have not begun to fathom the consummate skill of the American bluff. You contend that the material loss to the Canadian is small, and that therefore his discontent and irritation will be merely transient. There you are wrong; he may forgive, but it will be a long time before he

will forget. Very likely the game would not have been worth the candle, but I think you showed an inclination to minimize the importance of the game, and were a little premature in your conclusion that it could not have been played by daylight after all. Canadians, at this moment, find a somewhat grim amusement in the thought that the war you avoided by a successful "climb down" might possibly be forced upon you because Japanese children are not allowed to attend public schools in San Francisco. However, your partner is playing this hand, and he is not easily bluffed. Let us hope that Newfoundland has realized the folly of expecting John Bull to attend to other people's troubles over the telephone, while he is so dreadfully worried about who is to hear the children their catechism at home.

I do want something more. I want you, the individual Englishman, to do your share, to put yourself out somewhat; if by so doing you may get to know your Canadian brother better than you do. The mere exercise of an effusive and somewhat patronizing hospitality is of little use; you must take him on equal terms. If you visit him, don't take it for granted that because your social position at home is assured you will find it equally easy to get on with people there. You won't; you will be constantly treading on their toes, though they may be too polite to tell you so. They will tread on yours too, and will be equally surprised if you flinch or remonstrate; but the more you see of one another the better you will get on.

For there are faults on both sides. Only a day or two ago I read a letter in a London newspaper, from an Australian, complaining of English ignorance of Australian geography, adding that the Australian child knew far more of the geography of England than did the ordinary Englishman of that of Australia. I have had similar remarks made to me in Canada, dozens of times. Let me tell you, between ourselves, they are not true. Probably, of course, the average child anywhere knows more geography than the average

man, because the latter has forgotten it. There was a time when, if a Canadian jeered at me because some prominent English journal had mixed up Ontario and Saskatchewan, I smiled deprecatingly, and apologized. I don't now; I retort with a question about the geography of New Zealand, or I spring on him a few problems about this Island, such as the relative longitude of Edinburgh and Liverpool. Then I advise him to learn a little more about his sister Colonies before he attacks the Mother Country for her ignorance of her children's nurseries. Still the fact remains that more Canadians, in proportion to means and population, come over here than you will find Englishmen visiting Canada; the question of settling there is, of course, a different thing.

After all, you may have the geography of a country, and the statistics of her Year Book, at your fingers' ends, and yet know very little of the real nature of her inhabitants. You, the English reader, may even leave this country and settle in Canada for good; you may cut adrift from all home ties, and form fresh ones in your new home: but, to the day of your death, you will never become a Canadian in the sense that your children, born out there, would be. You won't find other people's feet getting in the way of yours, after a few years, anything like so much they did at first; but you will never be perfectly sure that, at any moment, you may not give or receive an unexpected jar, for which you were totally unprepared by your English training and education. This remark was first made to me by a public official, who died not long ago in Canada, at the age of over seventy, having lived there since he was eighteen, and I have never seen cause to doubt its complete accuracy. It is the little things that count in the comradeship that comes from thorough mutual un

derstanding; the little trivialities that are considered good form on one side of the water but wrong on the other, and vice versâ. The very fact of our essential similarity emphasizes and underlines our diversity in trifling details, which we disregard as of no account, but which are part and parcel of our nature; and whose importance we only realize when we discover that a friend will often forgive an injury sooner than a fancied slight.

The Englishman in the Colonies is in a minority, and must be prepared to suffer accordingly, to be looked upon as fair game, and to stand good humoredly derogatory remarks concerning his native land, which would be very hotly resented were the position reversed. He is constantly reproached for not making sufficient allowance for the different conditions of life "out there" by the very man who habitually forgets that an Englishman's views must necessarily be colored by the circumstances of his birth and breeding. To the man born on the banks of the St. Lawrence, the very word "river" does not bear the same significance as it does to the man born on the banks of the Thames or the Tweed.

People who undertake a journey from Montreal to Winnipeg, in the same casual spirit that a Londoner travels to Liverpool, are apt to conclude that because they cover more ground they inust necessarily learn more of "the world"-a dangerously ambiguous expression, because a London shoeblack who has never been outside the fourmile radius, may also be said to know "more of the world" than does the farmer on the prairie. Parochialism cuts a poor figure when laughing at insularity.

It may be paradoxical to say so, but one of the greatest obstacles to complete sympathy is the existence of a leisure class in the older country, & class that is practically unknown in the