Canada as a Field for the Solution of Imperial Problems

Mr. President. and Gentlemen,--

The Dominion of Canada is a proof to the world of the mastery, the masterfulness, of Great Britain as a colonizing power. Though there may have been some in the past who cavilled at Britain, and though probably the period when the United States withdrew from Britain might have produced in some minds the belief that the English people had lost their power of colonizing, I believe that today Canada, standing side by side with the United States as one of a large number of related dependencies, is a proof that Britain has not lost her power for colonizing; that there is still the adaptable spirit in Britain, and that she is still able to weld into one, divergent nationalities. Quebec, standing as it does in the midst of other provinces, so homogeneous, so tenacious of her old customs, in many respects so loyal to another civilization, progressing withal in population and in power, and yet being an integral part of this Dominion and preserving loyalty above all to Britain, is a proof that in the British race there is a marvellous power and adaptation in welding together diverse interests. The fact that at the head of the Dominion of Canada today there is a Prime Minister of that race is a standing testimony to the largeness of view of Great Britain as represented in her Empire.

There is a great deal of fascination about our history, a history that stretches back so far now. There is also with it a great deal of natural beauty which forms a background for the great problems of empire that have been solved in this country. You think of the great crises of our history, and think of the localities in which our history was moulded--Louisburg, Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Niagara-all these scenes are more or less accordant with the transactions in which mighty matters were in the struggle for, ascendancy. There is no dull monotony of landscape, but you have charm, you have majesty, you have even stern grandeur; and this local fascination of the spots on which our history has been wrought out is a large element that goes to form our national conceptions. In addition to that the seeds of Empire have been laid through this eastern part of the Dominion for a great many years, through the various surging tides from the old days when there was interest in Acadia, and through Quebec, and up over the rivers, and through the Great Lakes, right down to the present. There have been periods of great turmoil, of great confusion; periods of warlike struggle, periods of civil struggle; and, like heavy clouds, these crises have swept over our nation from the east almost to the west. At times they may have been thought to be disturbing elements, but we may look upon these struggles as being often the fertilizing clouds that watered the seed from which our Dominion has sprung; whereas the glare of constant prosperity might have withered it up in individualism, arid, dry, without any productive power. As we look back over the past, then, these struggles have entered into our life and have been factors in the development of the Imperial problems which have been solved and which we are to solve in the days to come.

There is, further, a great deal of interest-I might almost say fascination-about the men who from time to time have been flung up to the surface, and have led our people in the solution of these problems. In every Province there have been political heroes, men who attracted to themselves the interest and the affection of the people, men of whom we are not ashamed, men of whom the whole Empire need not be ashamed; and at the times of crisis we seem never to have been wanting in some such strong, fascinating, dominating persons who have in themselves represented the problems that have been facing the people, and who led the people out to unknown paths; often, if I may be allowed to change the figure, by their very life-blood they have cemented the foundations on which our Dominion has since been built. There is a vast amount of fascination on the personal side of our Dominion's history.

The Dominion also is a field for illustrating the great problems of government, not only our own government, but the government of the Empire at large. Historians are telling us today that, as they investigate our past in this Dominion, they see that almost the supreme problems of any government were threshed out from the beginning on our own soil; that you can illustrate almost all the problems of self-government in one way or another, in one part or another, of our history in this Dominion. They not only tell us that, but they tell us that the history in our Dominion reacted upon the history of the Mother-land, and that the progress in, government, and in true democracy in Britain itself, during the nineteenth century, was in no inconsiderable way moulded by the very struggles that were going on in our own Dominion of Canada. It is not very long since that was borne in upon me, and the more I consider it the truer does it seem to me to be; and that at once answers this question: " What is the use of the Colonies being kept in touch with Great Britain? If they serve no commercial interest, why not cut the painter, why keep them simply for a sentimental reason?" Now, it is not the commercial side that interests me particularly. It is not the sentimental side that interests me, but I believe that the great reason why we must keep our close connection in the Empire, even for the sake of Britain, is that as: Britain seeks to illustrate the great principles of government in various forms through her great Empire, she in her own home becomes stronger to attack problems arising there, and she understands more fully how they should be adapted to the circumstances which she has to face.

Think of the stream of men that have gone forth from Britain for the last three hundred years, and more than that, men of the very finest quality. She has never begrudged her best, and these men have gone forth with certain conceptions of British freedom and of British law. When they went forth they thought that these might be applied in certain ways, and you all know that it is one thing to have a theory and it is another thing to see that theory work out in practice. But as these men of finest quality have been faced with new situations, with new peoples, with new conditions, the theories that they took with them have been modified. Their ideas have been changed. They had to adapt their theories to circumstances, and powerful minds, adapting these theories to circumstances, got a new idea of the sweep and scope of the principles with which they went forth, and they have returned to Britain and have reacted upon Britain and have given Britain herself a largeness of view, a power, a breadth, that otherwise would have been impossible.

Think what it means to Britain to have a man like Lord Cromer, not merely from a sentimental point of view. Not at all. I am leaving that out of account; but a man of his power, who had to take the British ideals and work out as many of those ideals as was possible in new circumstances, in new surroundings. He knows where their strength lies; he knows where their essential value is as others cannot know; and so it is with the statesmen of the Indian Empire, and I believe that the part of the Empire that really first contributed most largely to this development of Great Britain was none other than the Dominion of Canada. Therefore, this stream of men coming out, this idea on the part of Britain that she must give her best to others, is a very means of strengthening herself at home. It is not merely land grasping. Too often, perhaps, our Imperial instinct leads us to that. That is a low motive entirely. It is not merely that we may expand our commerce, but it is that the world may understand the ideals that the Briton stands for, and that men may understand their meaning better as he sought to give to others that which he has found serviceable to himself.

Now that leads us to believing that more and more we may look to the solution of some of the most serious home problems from within our Empire itself. You know the problems, some of them, that are coming up. You know that some of these are social problems. In a way the most serious problems of the world today are not those on the confines of the Empire, but they are those in the heart of the Empire, in our own great cities, in our own country, problems calling, clamantly calling, for solution; and I believe that these problems will be best solved by those who have had a good training in principles of self-government, put to the test through years of self-sacrifice, not of aggrandizement or of glory; years of devotion to certain ideals, years of patient, earnest, attempting to work out for less favoured peoples the blessings that have been enjoyed in more civilized lands-that all this will bear fruit by reacting on the homeland, and will give to us a fuller and a freer solution of what faces us in our own immediate environment. That is the great underlying reason why I believe that the British Empire should be maintained.

The next part of my subject is "How Canada can contribute in the present to the solution of these problems." She has helped in the past, as I have already said. No Empire has stood long simply through force, simply by pressure from without, simply by arming itself against attack. No strong Empire has ever lasted long that way. It is not the coat of armour that has been the defence, but it has been the man within the coat of armour, the man who has known how to use it, and I sincerely, hope that the day will soon come when armies and navies will be as obsolete for defence as many of our coats of armour in our museums today. The real power that makes a nation is the life that is in it, and I like to think of a nation as an organism-an organism with head and body and members, an organism healthy, compacted, knit together as joint fits joint, kept powerful and strong because of the healthy life-blood that flows through it, because of the direction and energy that comes from the brain and is carried out into every member of it; an organism working together in an intelligent, strong, moral way. I like to think of the Empire as a living organism. If so, what then is the function of Canada in this organism? I believe our function will be the understanding of that essence of the British nationality that has given it its distinctive worth, preserving it and handing it on in strength to some other member of the Empire. You ask, "What is that?" Well, at this time in the afternoon it would be absurd for me to linger long over this, but there are one or two points that will bring out my meaning.

There is, first of all, the British idea of the home, and of the family, and of our domestic life. That, after all, is the root of all life and of all living. And the word home means a great deal to a man of Anglo-Saxon extraction. There is, further, a certain standard of morality in business life, a certain interest, a certain uprightness, that we say ought to be characteristic of the true Briton; that is altogether different from whatever theory you may hold as to free trade or protection. It is a certain ethical code, relationship between man and man in his commercial dealings. A third is the respect for law and the regard for freedom; law, not as something tyrannical, imposed by force from without, against which you rise in almost protest, but law as the reasonable expression of a thoroughly organized social life which we accept as the truest expression of what makes up our intercourse one with another; law and freedom-the one the obverse, the other the reverse. This has been a large element in the British nationality. Further, there has been the thought of religion as at the basis of a man's life, and lying below his morality; that our life has its foundations rooted in the unseen, and that you and I in our duty are responsible to powers that make for good and have control over us. And, lastly, there is the belief in education, that education should be given to all; that the mind should be trained; that intellectual power should be developed, and that the man should go forth with his eyes open to look at things as they are, as competent to understand what is brought within his reach.

These are some of the elements that have entered into Britain's national life. You say "Don't you find them in other nations?" Of course you do. What, then, is it that makes us cling to Britain? It is the blend, the proportion, in which these ingredients enter into the character and the quality of each. As we go back over our past we recognize that our present is made up very largely of the things that we have inherited. We look at things today as we do because of the environment with which we have been surrounded, because of the traditions that have been handed down to us. Our friendships in life determine our tastes largely; so that taste itself is very little of an objective, much more of a subjective thing. So our judgments are moulded by our environments, likes and dislikes. So we have inherited from Britain, from our past, from the Empire, certain ways of looking at life, certain ways of regarding the home. We are not at ease unless we get certain qualities in our home, in our friends; unless they give us certain points of view. So in our trade, so in our law, so in our religion, so in our education. It is the type and the quality of the thing, the proportion of the ingredients, as I have said, and the general effect of the whole. These are elements in their various proportions that have entered into our nationality and have made us what we are.

Now we cannot help, I believe, regarding these things, and in the proportion in which they have come to us they seem of higher value to the world than almost any other contribution that any other nation has yet given. We believe in Britain because of what she has given to us, because of what we are ourselves. We cannot look at her from any other point of view; our affection goes out to her-our mind, our thought, go out to her. And we think that it is as these ideals are taken up by us, given perhaps a certain turn, and passed on to others to meet new situations, that we shall fulfill our function in the world. This has been a very abstruse talk for the last few minutes, but I think we may perhaps come to something less philosophical and more practical. Since ideas of this kind are of the very essence of life; since it is these thoughts that bind us together, since these inspirations make our manhood, nerve our right arm, give us power to do our own special work in the world, I should say that it is our duty in the Empire to make as easy as possible the transmission from one part of it to another of these very ideas-and ideas travel through human channels. Therefore, if Canada is in the future to perform her function in the Empire she ought, I believe, to be kept in close touch with the Empire, and we should have more intercourse of men and of thought than we have.

It is as men travel and get to know one another that they respect one another. Now, separated as we are by long stretches of land and of sea from various parts of the Empire, our interest is apt to weaken; and perhaps sometimes by harshness from the one to the other, or by what we may regard as rebuffs, or lack of sympathy, our affection is apt at times to wane. The method for increasing this affection, the method for uniting men more closely together, is to bring them together, to make them understand one another, to see that they understand the difficulties that each has to face, and when they have understood this, that in common they should set to work to work them out. Therefore anything that would open up means of intercourse between Britain and the Colonies ought to be very cordially welcomed by us all. This will enrich our life, it will give us some new views of perhaps old thoughts that have been growing faint and dim. Men, as they come to us, will give us new stimulus; as we go to them we get new ideas and come back. That does not mean that there is to be any more repetition of the past.

No Canadian of today who has any self-respect would imagine that we are to simply repeat the past and be another Britain over again. By no means. No self-respecting nation like Britain would imagine for a moment that those who have gone forth from her are merely to re-duplicate what she has done. The problems are not the same by any means, but what we do expect is that, with the same ideals, we should face our new surroundings, and that we should feel that there is a common outlook and a common aim set before us all. Therefore we must rejoice, not only in the opening of a means of intercourse, but rejoice also in the interchange of ideas that comes to us through periodicals, magazines, papers-everything of that kind; and it is a matter to be devoutly thankful for that the returns from the British Post Office, lately sent out, say that since the postage has been reduced, there has been an enormous increase in the number of British periodicals that have come into Canada. Then, further, I believe that our interchange in religious bodies, and in educational societies, and in universities and colleges, will bring ideas to the front that perhaps have been neglected.

I do not intend to detain you any longer because I have exhausted the half-hour, and will merely gather up what I have been trying to bring out. It is this: That Canada, standing in the midst of the Empire, has been the scene in the past in which some of the largest problems dealing not only with the Empire, with the heart of the Empire, Britain itself, have been brought to a solution; that we belong to this Empire because to us the principles of government and of life on which it has been based are regarded as the truest expression of our manhood, and that we are in the future to go forward to the solution of those problems not by isolating ourselves from all others, not by insulating ourselves from the nations round about us in which there is a vast amount that we must admire, but by strengthening the ties throughout the Empire, by opening up every avenue of intercourse throughout this Empire that men may come together, understand one another better, that their ideas may be sent forth and travel from end to end with greater freedom; and that we should welcome the conjoint attempt that is made by all who call themselves British to face the new problems, particularly it may be of a social character, that are looming up large on our horizon; and we may hope that as we have received in the past so much, so also together we shall work out in unison a solution that will be larger, broader and more humane than if we were to go on our way in a narrow, self-centered path.