England, Canada and the Great War

Broadly speaking, was it to be supposed, for instance, that the two wide continents of America would have, when peopled by hundreds of millions, continued in a condition of vassalage to the European continent, though owing their discovery and early settlements to European genius and enterprise? No doubt the growing national families of the New World would have liked a much longer stay under the roofs where they were born, had they received better and kinder treatment from their fatherly States. But at best the hour of separation would only have come later, postponed as it would have been by the bonds of enduring affection made more lasting by mutual good relations. Do we not see, almost daily, desolated homes often the sad result of senseless misunderstandings, or of guilty outbursts of intemperate passions? Yet, family home life, even when blessed by the inspiring smile of a lovely wife, the sweet voice of a devoted mother, the manly and Christian example of a good father, the affectionate sentiments of well bred children, is far too short under the most favourable circumstances. And why? Because it has to follow the Divine decree ordering separation for the building of new homes, to keep Humanity advancing towards the final conclusion of her earthly existence.

Had the American colonies been favoured by the constitutional liberties the Dominion of Canada enjoys, they would not have revolted and British connection would have endured many years longer. Still, one cannot conclude that those British provinces, realizing the marvellous development all can witness, would have for ever agreed to be satisfied with their colonial status. When they would have grown taller and bigger than the mother-country, most likely Great Britain herself would have taken the initiative of a friendly separation followed by a close alliance which would have perpetuated the familial bond actually so happily restored.

As prophesied by Sir Erskine May, more than half a century ago, in speaking of the probable future of the then British colonies, the American Republic would have grown out of the dependencies of the British Empire.

And to-day, when the United States are doing such a gigantic effort, conjointly with the whole British Empire, to save Humanity from German cruel domination, England, to use the very words of the distinguished writer and historian just cited, "may well be prouder of the vigorous freedom of her prosperous son than of a hundred provinces subject to the iron rule of British pro-consuls."

The possibilities of the material development of the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – without counting India and the lesser colonies – on account of their immense natural resources, are such as to justify very great hopes for their future. The time will come when they will number together a much larger population than the United Kingdom. Will the British Empire, as foreseen by one of the greatest political minds Canada has produced, declared by his chief and worthy opponent the equal to the celebrated William Pitt, then develop into a grand Commonwealth of nations.

If so, as wrote Sir Erskine May, England "will reflect, with exultation, that her dominion ceased, not in oppression and bloodshed but in the expansive energies of freedom, and the hereditary capacity of her manly offspring for the privileges of self-government."

Several generations will certainly rise and disappear before such an important question, looming far off in the future, is likely to be – if ever – raised requiring a practical solution. But foreseeing such a distant possibility, it is still more our bounden duty to be true to our present and prospective obligations for many years to come, as foreshadowed by the actual course of events shaping themselves in the sense of the consolidation of the Empire which may never be really dissolved even by the separation of her manly offspring. Family bonds, strengthened by deep affection, are not broken because the faithful boy, grown up a healthy and strong man, leaves to go under his own blessed roof, taking with him to his last day the cherished recollections of the happy days he has passed in the equally blessed parental home.

One of our most ardent desires must be that our successive generations of children be so well trained to the intelligent and patriotic use of Political Liberty, as to accumulate, in due course of time, an admirable heritage of sound principles of self-government enriched by the honourable examples of our faithful loyalty to the Mother land never grudged to her, but given with overflowing measure, not only as a matter of duty, but also as a reward from grateful subjects for the regard and respect always paid to their constitutional rights and privileges.

If such is ever the natural outcome of our political achievements, the vast Empire reared with such a great success would truly survive separation, being merely transformed into a splendid galaxy of independent States still bound together by the strong ties created by centuries of reciprocal devotedness. It would constitute a real league of nations working in concert and with grandeur for the peace and the prosperity of the whole world.

A Machiavellian Proposition

On reading Mr. Bourassa's pamphlet entitled: —Yesterday, To-day, To-morrow, I discovered what I have qualified a Machiavellian proposition. What Machiavellism means is well known. It expresses the views of that most corrupt and contemptible politician and publicist, called Machiavel, born at Florence, in 1649.

At page 140 of the above mentioned pamphlet, Mr. Bourassa wrote: —

"I will speak my mind openly —je vous livre toute ma pensée– : if in default of Independence, I claim Imperial representation, it is because it would weaken the military organization of England, —l'armature de guerre de l'Angleterre– precipitate the dissolution of her Empire, hasten the day of deliverance, for us and for the whole world."

Such are the loyal sentiments expressed by the "Nationalist" leader. He clamours for the Imperial representation of the Colonies, for the solemnly avowed object to use the privilege for the destruction of the Empire. To achieve this end he declares that the military power of England must first be weakened.

No wonder then that he started his "Nationalist" campaign by fighting with all his might the two successive proposals of contribution to the great military naval fleet of Great Britain.

No wonder that he opposed Canada's intervention in favour of England in the South African war.

No wonder that from the outbreak of the hostilities, in 1914, until the day when he was shut up by the Order-in-Council censuring all disloyal speaking and writing detrimental to the winning of the war, he has tried to move heaven and earth to prevent Canada's participation in the conflict.

He tells his countrymen that if he has become a convert to Imperial representation – in other words, Imperial Federation – it is because he considers it would be the best way of ruining the Empire and of delivering, not only Canada, but the whole world from British domination.

For fear that the French Canadians, whom he especially wished to influence, would not be very easily caught in the disloyal trap, he tries hard to prevail upon them by the following reasons: —

"If we are not sufficiently clear-sighted and energetic to work for this salutary object by the most constitutional, the most British, means at our disposal, others, happily, will do it for us.

"The English-Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders persistingly claim representation in the government of the Empire. When the war is over, their claims will be reaffirmed with increased ampleness and energy. The Indians (les Hindous) themselves will do the same. Shall we remain alone to rot stupidly (croupir béatement) in colonial abjection."

Without the slightest doubt, there are many English-Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Indians, in favour of Colonial Imperial representation. The number is increasing and likely to increase. But Mr. Bourassa is absolutely, I might as well say, absurdly, mistaken, if he really believes that they do so for his own purpose of destroying the British Empire. They want the very reverse: their object is to consolidate the Empire, not to dissolve her. They will not accept as a very flattering compliment Mr. Bourassa's charge that their desire to strengthen the British Commonwealth proves that they prefer to continue stupidly rotting in colonial abjection rather than work for their deliverance from British domination.

But what in the world has brought the "Nationalist" leader to the conclusion that the surest way to save Canada from the peril of Imperialism was to secure Imperial representation for the treasonable purpose, on entering the fort, to pull down the flag and destroy the whole Empire? To frighten his French Canadian compatriots with terror at the slightest move in favour of an increased Imperialism, he waves before them, with wild gesticulation, any and every extravagant writings he lays his hand on preaching a ridiculous expansion of Imperialist aspirations. He is perhaps the only man in Canada who has read a most absurd work which he pretends to have been written by a General named Lea, and from which, in horror stricken, he summarized a few unbelievable views.

Mr. Bourassa said that General Lea, gifted with an astonishing foresight, predicted all that was happening in Europe and in the world. The General, again affirms Mr. Bourassa, has proved in a striking way that if England wishes to maintain her Empire and to continue exercising her domination over the world she must make the sacrifice of her political liberties and of those of her Colonies, abolish the Parliamentary and Representative Governments and resolutely adopt the ironed regime of the Romans of old, of the Germans of the present day.

Once so brilliantly inspired, General Lea went on in a splendid manner. He added, says Mr. Bourassa, that England must transform her Empire into a vast armed camp, must keep in her own hands all the powers of command, must subdue all the non-British races to the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons united together by the unique thought of dominating the world by brutal force.

These views – so says Mr. Bourassa – are to be found in a book entitled: "The Day of the Saxon." If they have been really expressed with the full sense given to them by Mr. Bourassa's translation into French, I cannot say less than that they are most absurd, most extravagant. The Nationalist leader would have proved himself a much more sensible, a wiser man, if, laughing at such senseless notions, he had refrained from quoting those lines for the purpose of telling the French-Canadians that like all non-British races on earth they were doomed to be devoured – flesh and bones – by the voracious Anglo-Saxons bent on swallowing humanity. And to save them from such a cruel fate, he implores them to clamour for Imperial representation with the criminal intent of betraying their trust, and to use the honourable privilege they would be granted to ruin the Empire they would swear to maintain and defend. So far as the political program of General Lea is concerned, we have not yet learned that its benevolent author was doing much in the war to carry it out. If I had the honour to meet the General, being presented, I presume, by Mr. Bourassa, I would ask him, first, when and where he has discovered that England was dominating the world.

I know that there exists a great England holding a large situation on earth. Her Empire extends to almost a fourth of the globe. Her Sovereignty reigns over nearly four hundred million of human beings; a truly beneficient Sovereignty, because it rules according to the wishes, to the opinions of its subjects, managing their own affairs in virtue of the freest political institutions in the whole world.

I know of no England dominating, or even aspiring to dominate, the world. Such an England only exists in the heated imagination of that General Lea and in the minds of all those, like the Nationalist leader, who are, or feign to be, tortured by the bugbear of military Imperialism of the old Roman ironed type.

As long as three-fourths of the earth will remain independent of the British Empire, under numerous sovereignties, England's pretended domination of the world will ever only be an extravagant dream.

Wishing England to continue her domination of the world, General Lea, no doubt to please Mr. Bourassa, was bound to suggest the means to do so. Let us analyze them.

1. – England must make the sacrifice of her political liberties and of those of her Colonies.

2. – She must abolish parliamentary and representative governments.

It is beyond conception that Mr. Bourassa should have for one minute seriously considered such absurd notions.

I would enjoy attending large public meetings in Great Britain, where General Lea would propose to British free men the sacrifice of all their political liberties, to witness the rather warm reception he would be favoured with. I am sure he would have to rush out of the halls much faster than he would have walked in.

Where is the sane man who really believes that, dreaming of a domination of the world by brute force, British free men would consent to do away with their Parliamentary system to transform the whole of the Empire into an armed camp? Such a proposition was sheer madness, a most foolish talk, unworthy of the slightest attention from sensible people. Mr. Bourassa was very wrong in giving it publicity, and very unwise, to say the least, in using it to frighten his French-Canadian compatriots by blandishing before their eyes that ridiculous specimen of the phantom of Imperialism.

Is it to be supposed for one single instant that the British people, so rightly proud of their political liberties, and of their representative government, which after centuries of efforts and trials they have successfully brought to such perfection, basing its future permanency on the solid rock of ministerial responsibility, would consent to sacrifice them for the sake of a vain, a ridiculous, an odious and impracticable scheme to dominate the world by brute force?

It is ten times worse than madness to believe that the British people who have torn away from the British soil the last root of ABSOLUTISM, would, for any earthly reason, renounce their most legitimate conquests, to rebuild, on the burning ruins of their most sacred rights, an ironed political regime of the old Roman or present German type! Is it to be believed that they would agree to replace, on the glorious Throne which they protect with all the might of their loyal affection, their present constitutional Sovereign by a new Nero or another Wilhelm II?

If it is with the purpose of preventing such a dire calamity that the Nationalist leader became a convert to Imperial Federation, he is absolutely losing his time and his energy in promoting such a regime. If ever Imperial Federation becomes a fact, we can all rest perfectly assured that the new Imperial Parliament will not vote their own destruction to be replaced by an autocratic and tyrannical government.

I hope that Mr. Bourassa is the only believer, all over Canada, in the assertion of General Lea that England's aspirations is to dominate the world by brute force. It is a most injurious, I can say, calumnious, charge. All know, or should know, that England was the first nation to completely abolish slavery over all her Empire; that has granted, in the largest possible measure, Political Liberty to all her Colonies; that guarantees to all races the same rights and privileges, never interfering in colonial internal management. He is wilfully guilty of a calumnious charge the man who accuses the British race to aspire to dominate the world by an ironed regime, when he should know that Great Britain ran the risk of a crushing defeat, in refusing to organize a standing army of several millions of trained officers and men.

A Treasonable Proposal

The Nationalist leader wants the French-Canadians to support his scheme in order to work for the salutary object of demolishing the British Empire by the so very constitutional means of Imperial Federation. How he has failed to realize the infamous kind of suggestion he was making will always be a wonder to all those reading it.

If, sooner or later, Great Britain and her Colonies are politically organized as an Imperial Federation, the Province of Quebec will have several French-Canadian representatives in the new Greater Imperial Parliament. The Nationalist leader wants those French-Canadian Members to go to London pledged to destroy the Empire to which they will have to swear allegiance and fealty before crossing the threshold of the House of Commons and taking their seats. Does he not understand that any French-Canadian doing what he wishes and recommends would deliberately perjure himself? Does he not comprehend that he was paying a rather poor compliment to his British countrymen from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, when he affirmed, without the shadow of truth, that they would elect to the Imperial Parliament members holding the mandate from them to work for the dissolution of the Empire?

I notice, with surprise, that in the enumeration he has drawn of the future destroyers of the future federated British Empire, he has not convened his friends, the Boers, to his holy task. Does he not consider them as farsighted and energetic as the others he has pompously mentioned with such childish illusion. Or, has he not, unconsciously, paid them the high compliment to suppose that they would be unable to accomplish the treasonable act which, with confidence, and even certainty, he expects from the others. Our countrymen, the Boers of South Africa, have, by a large majority, become so loyal to the Crown, to the Empire, – and they have so gloriously proved it since the outbreak of the war – that it is manifestly evident that they are very well satisfied with their present position, that they have dispelled from their minds all bitter recollections of the struggle which, a few years ago, finally brought them within the Empire they are doing such a noble effort to maintain and save from the German tyrannical grasp.

The following views, recently expressed, in London, by Mr. Burton, Minister of Railways and Harbours in the Government of South Africa, a leading public man of the far away sister Dominion, is refreshing reading after Mr. Bourassa's outrageous outburst above quoted. He said: —

"One of the motives which prompted South African support of the British cause was the fact, which appealed not only to the English-speaking population, but moved the Dutch population – the fact that the British cause had embraced all the progressive peoples of the world. It was not Britain's wealth, or influence, or power that appealed to them; it was the priceless privilege of the maintenance of our constitutional liberties. He could illustrate their attitude by a single incident which had come within his own experience in connection with a Transvaaler, born and bred, whom he had questioned as to his future in the military service in which he was an officer. The officer replied that he had been through the German South-West African campaign, that he was going through the German East African campaign, and when that was done he intended making for Flanders. He added: "I mean that as a man I could not act otherwise in view of the treatment dealt out to us by Great Britain. If she had not done what she did for us I should not have stirred hand or foot.""

No one need be surprised that the South African Dominion is suffering a little from the "Nationalist" fever, a disease infesting many countries, in various degrees, and with time cured by the safe remedy of the sound common sense of the people. We know too much about it ourselves, after nearly eighty years of free responsible government, to wonder at the fact that a small minority of the Dutch South Africans – from the Boer element – is not yet fully reconciled with their lot under the British Crown. They apparently dream of Republicanism, in sullen recollection of a recent past which only some of the present generation still regret, but which the next will strive to cherish only as the stepping stone to their actual status so full of good promises for their future. The few South Africans suffering from this virus are almost exclusively recruited amongst the populations of the late Republics of South Africa. The people of the provinces of Natal and Cape Colony, with a long experience of British rule, have no faith in the "republican nationalism" desired by some, which does not in the least appeal to their good sense and their sound political foresight. Mr. Burton believes "that the instigators of the movement are looking for votes more than for anything else."

Mr. Burton, moreover, truly said: —

"It was part of the history of all countries that what was called "Nationalism" made a powerful appeal to the finer classes of young men. It was an admirable sentiment, but what was complained of in South Africa was that the sentiment was expended upon a wrong conception of "nationalism" and what nationhood should be. In South Africa it was restricted, it was sectional, and practically racial. The energy and activity displayed were being spent upon a mistaken cause."

Every word of this quotation applies with still greater force to the "nationalism" of the Province of Quebec.

Mr. Burton goes on saying: —

"It was the cause of South Africa first – as it should be – but it was more than that. It was South Africa first, last, and all the time, and South Africa alone. He and those who were associated with him could not accept that view. It would mean ruinous chaos in South Africa. They had obligations to Great Britain. It was not merely that they had received recognition from the beginning that their Constitutional cause was just. It was not merely that Great Britain in its relation with South Africa had been actuated by that beneficent influence which the British system of liberty effected under the sway of its flag throughout the world, but it was that the people of the Union realized the true inward significance of the struggle in which the Empire was engaged. They knew that the world's freedom was at stake, and with it their own. The people in South Africa had long ago awakened to this great fact, and they were realizing it more and more as the war went on. When he had spoken of putting "South Africa first" as the motto of a party he wished it to be understood that he and the people of South Africa generally accepted it, as every nation was bound to accept it. But they also realized that their future as a nation and their freedom as a nation were at stake, and that their interests were bound up with those of the British Empire.

"It was because they realized that fact that the Government of the Union had in these troublous times nailed its flag to the mast. It was the honourable course, the right course, and they had stuck to it through good report and ill report, and through much trial and sacrifice. His last message as representative of the Union Government was: Upon that attitude of the Union Government they might depend to the very last. They might be forced – he did not see any present prospect of it – to abandon office, but so long as they were in office they would adhere absolutely in the letter and in the spirit to the undertaking they had given and would continue in the path they had followed hitherto."

Sensible, truly political and patriotic, noble words, indeed. Are they not the complete expression of the powerful wave of enthusiasm which spread throughout the length and breadth of the whole British Dominions overseas, when, after exhausting to the last drop her efforts to maintain peace, Great Britain, in honour bound, threw her gallant sword in the balance in which the destinies of the world were to be weighed during the frightful years of the most terrific thundering storm ever witnessed by man?

How weighty those words are is evident. They are still more so by the fact that they positively and firmly express the views and sentiments of the two most trusted and illustrious leaders of the Boers, who, both of them, took a very prominent part in the South African war, as generals commanding the forces of the South African Republics: General Botha and General Smuts.