A New Canadian's Impressions of Britain

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,--I thank you for the hearty welcome accorded to a Canadian after the gilt of the ginger bread, so to speak, had worn off. My proposed visit to the Old Country this summer naturally recalls the impressions created by the land of my birth after two years' absence from it.

We sometimes are inclined to forget that we can be perfectly loyal Canadians and equally loyal adherents of the land from which we came. After all, the two are one; we are all brothers, anyway, and it is simply pride in our own home when we are proud of Britain. I am immensely thankful to have come to this land, where I have spent two very happy, if somewhat strenuous, and, once in a blue moon, slightly contentious, years. (Laughter) I am proud, indeed, to be a Canadian citizen. Shortly after coming to Canada I was told by a distinguished professor of the University of Toronto that he and others like him saw the old land through a rosy haze. I have begun to understand that a little

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Dr. Sclater is a graduate of Cambridge University, England. While there he was president of the Student's Union. In Edinburgh he was pastor of the New North Presbyterian Church-one largely attended by the student body. For a time he supplied the place which Henry Drummond had held. He is a recognized Dante Scholar and is the author of works on literary and religious subjects. He is now pastor of Old St. Andrew's Church.

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better now; in its own way and in its own place the old land becomes the one land of all the world. I take it that all of us can sympathize with the feeling expressed in the translation of an old French poem that I happened to come across only this morning where an exile from France, thinking of the land of his birth, has expressed something of the tenderness that it calls up in his mind:--

"Ah, more than these imperious piles of Rome Laugh the low portals of my boyhood's home; More than their marbles must its slate roof be, More than the Tiber's flood my Loire is still, More than the Palatine my native hill, And the soft air of Anjou than the sea."

There is a responsive chord in all of us to sentiment like that. (Applause)

In going back to see the old land I am moved by a desire, first, to see its physical loveliness. As one star differeth from another star in glory-comparisons are invidious and to be avoided if possible. We are not to compare the physical beauty of Britain with that of Canada, because they are not precisely in the same category within beauty. There is a great Canadian loveliness. Until I came here and stood on the shores of Lake Huron I never saw such star-besprangled skies in all my life. Those blazing nights, when the hosts of heaven sparkled like lamplit diamonds in the dark blue velvet sky, made one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen. And there is a certain colour which is peculiarly Canadian, particularly the colour of sunset with its light tones reflected in those wonderful still lakes. Canada has its own beauty; but so, unquestionably, has the old land.

I do not know that we, who claim our descent therefrom, quite boost enough, the loveliness of Britain. Of course, that assumes that you see it. I quite admit that it has been known to rain in Britain (laughter) and that sometimes, because of the rain drops in between, it is impossible to see the beauty that is there. I am not going to try to develop any Californian attitude of mind towards Scotland, and maintain that "It ain't goin' to rain no mo'." (Laughter) I admit that it has been known to be wet in the British Islands, and especially in the northern part of the British Islands, and particularly in the western part of the northern part of the British Islands. (Laughter) There is a startling change in coming to a land where sunshine is the normal thing. For instance, a remarkable thing happened to me this last week-I found my umbrella. (Laughter) I do not mean that somebody else had "pinched" it, but I mean that I had not needed to look for it. Only once this last winter did I have to use my umbrella. Now, a Scotsman knows where his umbrella is just as certainly as he knows where his pyjamas are--he will need them at least once within the twenty-four hours (laughter) and so he keeps both his umbrella and his pyjamas handy. One of the innumerable jibes against the weather of the Old Country is that of the Scotsman, who, when asked what sort of a summer he had last year replied, "Well, I don't remember, except that it occurred on a Tuesday." (Laughter) But with it all-and, mark you, partly because of the rain-there is a peculiar loveliness in the old land that is all its own. I once met a British artist who had travelled greatly over the face of the earth--I don't know whether he had been to Canada--and he said he thought the two loveliest places in all the world were Ragusa, looking out upon the Mediterranean, and the western islands of Scotland at sunset on an August evening; and I felt a glow of patriotic pride when, together with the favored isles of Greece he bracketed the land from which many of us come. It is a lovely land.

But I do not want its orderedness. Some people speak as if the loveliness--of England, especially was due to the fact that the whole place looked as if it were a garden. I don't believe any such thing. Its beauty lies in its wildness-and there are wild places in that little bit of a land. A good deal of the land is as God made it, and I hope it will always be. The danger for Britain is that people will set about trying to improve upon the Master Architect's creations, and the results will probably be disastrous. I am glad to know that some of the most far-seeing men in the Old Country have secured that portions of the old land will be kept untouched, and preserved as a special national heritage. The mountainclimbers of Britain banded themselves after the war and purchased that little bit of tumbled country in which they learned their early rockclimbing- that band from which went forth those splendid men who essayed to bring under conquest the greatest of earth's peaks, Mount Everest. They have bought a considerable section of the mountainous region of the Lake District and presented it to the nation as a war memorial. Near the top of Scawfell, inscribed on a bit of the natural rock, is a very simple inscription to their own gallant dead; and all around lie those famous mountains, small in extent but unique in loveliness, which now belong for ever in their natural and untouched state to the British people. It is indeed a splendid war memorial. (Applause)

So I say it is the wildness of Britain that I want to see--the wildness, particularly of Scotland. It can be lovely in Scotland, I assure you. There are places where, for instance, if a ghillie sees three men walking along in the course of one morning he will shut up his jaws with a snap and say indignantly: "Come awa', come awa', ye might as well be in Piccadilly." (Laughter) Three in a day is too much of an insult to his rusticity. I want to see once again what Ruskin calls "The mountain gloom and the mountain glory." I want to see these hills wrapped in mist. I want to see the, shoulder of Cairngorm pushing its blade through breaking cloud. I want to see the shadow of dark clouds upon the heather. I want to see the mountain gloom as well as the mountain light in the blaze of the sun. I want, as a summer visitor, to go back and see my native land in its native beauty.

The second thing I want to see in Britain is a game of cricket (laughter); and particularly I want to see a game at the Oval, that most friendly of enclosures, and to see Jack Hobbs taking about 160 off Yorkshire (laughter)-particularly Yorkshire, because I lived in Lancashire all my boyhood, and was brought up to hate the Yorkshireman like poison, although I have since learned he is quite a good chap. Now, I am not going for a moment to be led into a disquisition on the comparative merits of games, because I know there are scares of magnificent baseball exponents in this room who would see to it that there was not enough of me left to go back to Britain if I said anything against baseball. (Laughter) What is more, I want to say that baseball is an exceedingly valuable game for a community, because it does not need an elaborate equipment, and a lot of people who may not be well-off can go to the nearest vacant lot and get first-class exercise. From that view, as a person interested in social well-being, I rejoice in the discovery, by some unique person, of the very remarkable game of baseball.

I want to see cricket partly because it is a symbol of what I believe is possibly the very greatest gift that the British race in the home land and the Dominions has given to the world. "Cricket" has become proverbial for a certain type of character, a certain attitude to one's opponent and to difficulties or to adverse positions in which one may find one's self. It stands as a symbol of something which is indeed a magnificent British possession, and which has to be guarded by us all as we would guard a jewel. It is well to remember that the game of cricket and other British games of a similar kind have been guarded--in the way in which they are played--by a certain type of man who has been developed and trained and educated in those schools, which are the lineal descendants of the old schools which trained for chivalry. Some of the great English public schools are developed directly from the foundations of the old schools of the Squires. In mediaeval times, before a man could be a Knight, he went through seven years of training as a Spearman under a Page, and then seven years of training as a Squire, before his twenty-first birthday, when he could mount his charger, take it into the church, lift the sword and sling it at his side, mount his charger again, and then go into the world to do deeds of derring-do. Many of those schools are the direct descendants of the old places of training in which Squires were turned into Knights, and where the special emphasis was upon the chivalric note in character. I believe that that particular note, as emphasized particularly by England, is perhaps the most valuable possession and tradition that we of the British race have. It displays itself in such extraordinary ways afterwards, in treatment of enemies, in public life, in industry, and in business life.

An unexpected instance of what you might call the cricket spirit, or the sporting spirit, has been given us in British politics within the last two months. We have now as Premier in Britain a man for whom we may thank God,--(hear, hear, and applause)-a man who is the very type of the British chivalrous spirit. I do not suppose there has been a more typical of the best product of the English public school than Mr. Baldwin-and I say that all the more because I am ancestrally an entirely unrepentant British Liberal, who does not believe any good in the world can come from any other source except British Liberalism. (Laughter) How it happens that a good chap like Mr. Baldwin is a Tory I cannot, make out. (Laughter) All one can say is that the wonders of grace never cease. (Laughter) A short time ago there came a chance to Mr. Baldwin to take an action which would have been perfectly justifiable politically-to reverse the Trades Dispute Act 1906. A large number of people, who do not agree with him politically, thought that Act should have been repealed or greatly altered. He had that chance; but if he had done so, using his legitimate power, serving an end which would help his party, and we may say his class, he would thereby probably have brought a certain dispeace into the industrial life of Britain. But, though he had the power to do a perfectly right thing, possibly a good thing as it might prove afterwards, yet he would have been using his strength as a giant, and not with mercy. And so, in the most memorable speech--they tell me there has not been such a moving speech in the House of Commons since the days of Gladstone-he refused to use the advantage he had, in order to make a gesture of industrial peace through the whole of the islands. Nobody but a great sportsman could have done that; and one is indeed thankful to think that that spirit is retained in the old land. (Applause)

One is impressed with the thought that those dismal Cassandra-like Jeremiahs, who say the British people are decaying, are talking definitely through their hats-even if they are diaconal hats. (Laughter) Such statements are simply not true. Let me mention one or two relevant facts. In Britain there are more than one million unemployed people who have to be supported by the dole, which is a bad thing; but what are you to do? In my last year at home, I was responsible as minister for a poor part of Edinburgh, and my hands hung down in absolute helplessness to deal with the condition of first-class decent folk who could not get work. At that time there were some 700,000 people more in the British Isles than at the outbreak of war, because emigration had ceased. Decent working men all around you were clamoring for jobs, and no jobs were there to give them. A million people out of work are living in British cities.

A very acute social observer once struck out a significant phrase, when he said that the most difficult social fact in the British Islands was the "towniness of towns." I think perhaps the most vivid contrast that rests in my mind, after having travelled a goad deal over Ontario, and to some extent about the Untied States, is between the cities of the new world and the cities of Britain. Here the towns are towns, but they are not "towny." Take the south-east part of Lancashire. If any one here knows it, or knows the Potteries, or the Black Country surrounding Birmingham, or the great industrial belt of the Valley of the Clyde stretching from Motherwell down through Glasgow town to Dumbarton, he knows what I am talking about. Here is Toronto, a great city of over 600,000, that can rank with the great cities of the home land; but when you come into it, where is the town? You have it all gathered here, for the most part, around the corner of King and Yonge streets and down towards the water front. Where is the "towniness"? You move upwards, and in a few hundred yards you are in the University area" and then for the rest, stretching illimitably, are the avenues and boulevards, and people's homes, surrounded by trees, shrubs, flowers, and grass held in common. Where is the town? Come with me to the southeast of Lancashire and start at Manchester to walk through thirty-five miles of street lamps straight to Preston with street flags the whole way, with cottages all of a shape, and of the same model, all blackened with smoke, with not a touch of variety, and hardly a green thing to be seen-nothing but black mud patches, devoid of all beauty. Or travel north-east over fifty-six miles to Bradford. Or, start at Motherwell and walk through Dumbarton on the north side of the Clyde. Talk of the "towniness of towns!" Or, starting from the Strand in London, walk south of Waterloo or east of Liverpool street--acre after acre, square mile after square mile of the "towniness of towns." I remember a man once saying to me that he did not believe that the third generation in the east-end of London are existing; they had simply died out, and their place had been taken by incomers from other places of Europe or incomers from the country. The "towniness of towns" crushing down upon multitudes and millions of people of the old land! Think of a million unemployed people living in the "towniness of towns" under palls of smoke, away from greenness and freshness and the magic of the lake; and yet despite that, all Britain is politically as steady as a rock. (Loud applause)

Now, really, gentlemen, I have heard men in Canada grouching about the Canadian taxation. Well, I have no doubt I will come to it in time (laughter), but at present my feeling is one of pure joy. I looked through my last accounts, and I saw that my taxation in the year 1922, paid on practically the same income, was about five times as much as I am paying in Canada. Well, I am not grumbling at the change--thank you very much--in taxation. (Laughter) A friend told me last night that he has heard instances of business men in successful business like yourselves, with the burden and care of great establishments on them, paying six shillings in the pound income tax, and actually saying, "Well, I don't think it's adivsable that anything should be taken off the income tax yet; we must give, and carry on." And despite all that, despite the ravages of war, despite the pressure upon the people of the burden of taxation, despite a million people who have to be kept supplied with the necessities of life by those who are working, the British pound this morning is almost at par. (Applause) All I have got to say to gloomy deans, whose churches are getting a bit rocky in the dome over them, is that I do not see any particular evidence of the decay of the British race. (Laughter and applause) And by the way, gentlemen, I hope that our brethren across the line in the great republic of the United States of America, who have their descent from the British stock, will be proud, with us, at the financial strength and courage and rectitude of their own ancestors. (Hear, hear, and applause)

One other point I would mention is the impression that Britain gives, as you look at it from a distance, of its magnificent romance of history, and the fact you can say what you like about the use of terms -that it is elected. I am not going into a theological debate with anybody, but whatever your views of election may be I say that there is a suggestion of election in the history of the people from whom we come. I would very much like to have a British history written by the author of the Book of Kings; it would be highly interesting and illuminating if that author and the Prophet Isaiah could co-operate upon the history of the British people. It would be highly helpful. I am quite certain that we can get a line on the sort of tone that their history would take. They would simply say to us: "Gentlemen, You of British stock have been chosen by God for a job"--I don't say they would put it exactly in that language, but this is what they would mean--"You have been chosen for a job; we can prove it to you." And they would set about, without any difficulty whatever, to prove the same. They would show us how that queer mongrel the Britisher, came into being, with a lot of admixtures of what seemed to be alien strains that produced the highly competent person that he now is. They would show us how there came, at a certain time, to the throne of Britain one of the wisest men that ever ruled in any country, who began, with a prescience that is almost uncanny, to perceive the significance of sea-power, and who began the British navy. They would talk to us about Alfred the Great. Then they would point out to us that, at the critical moment the British Navy was ready and adequate, and had secured sea-power when sea-power began to be the one road to empire, secured it for Britain in the great day of the Armada. They would point out to us how the specific people turned up at the right time; how there were Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh and his brother and his cousin, and all the rest of -them. They would show the men ready at the appointed time to hold the ways of the sea. Then they would point to the world from that little bit of an island and they would see far away in Canada, in Africa, in Australia, in New Zealand and the islands of the sea, the flower of that same race, in its influence and authority, because it held the ways of the sea. Then they would proceed to point out to us before Britain held the ways of the sea its people were held by Christianity. They would point that out, I am sure. (Applause) And then in very dignified language which a prophet would use, they would say to us

"Well, what about it?" They would say: "You have been elected, you have been selected; you have been given the men and the opportunity; you have gone forth into the corners of the world when you had secured for yourselves the faith. What about it? What is the meaning of your history?" And really, if we look at the things in the broad in that way, what is the meaning of our history?" And really, Britain for? Why has the little island so blossomed into flowers so noble and so great as Canada and the rest, if it is not that Britain is intended to be the defender of the faith? I believe that we are where we are in order that the gospel of brotherhood, the gospel of peace, and the great gospel of eternal life shall be given and secured to the world by the British people.

I will close with an illustration of the extraordinarily romantic way in which the world-wide significance of Britain for Christianity has been brought to my own mind; it is in relation to myself and happened in my own family. My father was the first missionary from the Orkeny Islands who went out to Africa, in 1.863. The Orkneys lie up toward the north of Scotland-lonely, windswept islands, separated considerably in race and character from the main part of Britain, with traditions all their own. Away up there lived a little boy, and love of the good touched his heart; and he made up his mind that he himself some day would go and proclaim the old, old story, which had been told to him. In 1863 he went and for twelve years he was in the Transkei, South Africa, working among tribes which at that time were entirely savage. In the year 1917 I was sitting in my billet at Etaples in France, when there came two black youths-they would have been good advertisements for Dherry Boot Polish,--dressed up to the nines in clerical uniform, with their hats at a slight tilt, with collars that buttoned behind, and everything in correct form as chaplains. I remembered that there were some black troops seven miles away, and I asked what I could do for them. They said they wanted books; and when I asked what kind, they replied that they wanted Pendlebury's Arithmetic. Fancy them wanting an arithmetic in a country that was at war! Naturally I had not that book to give them; but I asked them to sit down, and one of them told me they came from the Transkei. I said, "That is a name that is familiar in my house, for my father founded a mission station there, at Mbulu." It was as if I had put an electric charge into that chap. He leaped to his feet and held out his hands and said, "What is your name?" I told him my name was Sclater; and he said "Sclater? That is an honored name in my house; my grandfather was your father's first adherent to Christianity, and the first to help him in his work in South Africa." (Applause)

Now, think of that. There is an instance of how British election works. The faith of Christianity touched a little lad in the midst of the northern mists in our own islands, and sent him away to the south, to the distant Africas. By him the same faith was transmitted to a savage in a blanket and then the son of that lad and the grandson of the Kaffir met together, both as ministers of the Church, trying to serve the troops in the time of the Empire's need. I thought it was a curiously dramatic incident of how influence spreads around through the world. (Applause)

Gentlemen, our task is to acknowledge our selection as an agent for the furtherance and dissemination of that knowledge of the things that matter that have meant so much to our own people.

So as we think of Britain, we can perhaps quote the familiar words that come from another poet, from Browning, as he approached once the shore of Europe from Africa:

Gentlemen, Canada has maginficent possessions. At this time we are reminded of some of them. It has the possession of a noble country, a land of fair distances. It has the possession of a people kindly and generous in the deep heart of them. It has the possession of the memory of the magnificent gallantry of its own sons. This very day, in 1915, but for the lads of Canada, our line would have been broken through the gas fumes; and no man can tell what might have been the end thereof. Canada has its possessions that are dear and intimate and splendid and noble; but I doubt if it has a greater or prouder possession than just this--that its sons so greatly are of the ancestry and of the lineage of those who dwell in the little islands across the sea. (Loud applause, the audience rising)

PROFESSOR KEYS expressed the thanks of the Club to the speaker for his fine address.