brought men of the different provinces together. The Maritime Provinces
first felt fully at one with the rest of Canada when Vancouver and
Winnipeg rather than Boston and New York called their sons. Even
Ontario and Quebec made some advance toward mutual understanding, though
clerical leaders who sought safety for their Church in the isolation
of its people, imperialists who drove a wedge between Canadians by
emphasizing Anglo-Saxon racial ties, and politicians of the baser sort
exploiting race prejudice for their own gain, opened rifts in a society
already seamed by differences of language and creed. In the West unity
was still harder to secure, for men of all countries and of none
poured into a land still in the shaping. The divergent interests of the
farming, free trade West and of the manufacturing, protectionist East
made for friction. Fortunately strong ties held East and West together.
Eastern Canadians or their sons filled most of the strategic posts in
Government and business, in school and church and press in the West.
Transcontinental railways, chartered banks with branches and interests
in every province, political parties organizing their forces from
coast to coast, played their part. Much had been accomplished; but
much remained to be done. With this background of rapid industrial
development and growing national unity, Canada's relations with the
Empire, with her sister democracy across the border, and with foreign
states, took on new importance and divided interest with the changes in
her internal affairs.

From being a state wherein the mother country exercised control and the
colonies yielded obedience the Empire was rapidly being transformed
into a free and equal partnership of independent commonwealths under one
king. Out of the clash of rival theories and conflicting interests a
new ideal and a new reality had developed. The policy of imperial
cooperation--the policy whereby each great colony became independent of
outside control but voluntarily acted in concert with the mother country
and the sister states on matters of common concern--sought to reconcile
liberty and unity, nationhood and empire, to unite what was most
practicable in the aims of the advocates of independence and the
advocates of imperial federation. The movement developed unevenly. At
the outbreak of the Great War, it was still incomplete. The ideal was
not always clearly or consciously held in the Empire itself and was
wholly ignored or misunderstood in Europe and even in the United States.
Yet in twenty years' space it had become dominant in practice and theory
and had built up a new type of political organization, a virtual league
of nations, fruitful for the future ordering of the world.

The three fields in which this new policy was worked out were trade,
defense, and political organization. Canada had asserted her right to
control her tariff and commercial treaty relations as she pleased.
Now she used this freedom to offer, without asking any return in kind,
tariff privileges to the mother country. In the first budget brought
down by the Minister of Finance in the Laurier Cabinet, William S.
Fielding, a reduction, by instalments, of twenty-five per cent in tariff
duties was offered to all countries with rates as low as Canada's--that
is, to the United Kingdom and possibly to the Netherlands and New South
Wales. The reduction was meant both as a fulfilment of the Liberal
party's free trade pledges and as a token of filial good will to
Britain. It was soon found that Belgium and Germany, by virtue of their
special treaty rights, would claim the same privileges as Britain, and
that all other countries with most favored nation clauses could then
demand the same rates. This might serve the free trade aims of the
Fielding tariff but would block its imperial purpose. If this purpose
was to be achieved, these treaties must be denounced. To effect this
was one of the tasks Laurier undertook in his first visit to England in
1897.

The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, celebrating the sixtieth
anniversary of her reign, was made the occasion for holding the
third Colonial Conference. It was attended by the Premiers of all the
colonies. Among them Wilfrid Laurier, or Sir Wilfrid as he now became,
stood easily preeminent. In the Jubilee festivities, among the crowds in
London streets and the gatherings in court and council, his picturesque
and courtly figure, his unmistakable note of distinction, his silvery
eloquence, and, not least, the fact that this ruler of the greatest of
England's colonies was wholly of French blood, made him the lion of the
hour. In the Colonial Conference, presided over by Joseph Chamberlain,
the new Colonial Secretary, Laurier achieved his immediate purpose. The
British Government agreed to denounce the Belgian and German treaties,
now that the preference granted her came as a free gift and not as part
of a bargain which involved Britain's abandonment of free trade. The
other Premiers agreed to consider whether Canada's preferential
tariff policy could be followed. Chamberlain in vain urged defense and
political policies designed to centralize power in London. He praised
the action of the Australian colonies in contributing money to the
British navy but could get no promise of similar action from the others.
He urged the need of setting up in London an imperial council, with
power somewhat more than advisory and likely "to develop into something
still greater," but for this scheme he elicited little support. After
the Conference Sir Wilfrid visited France and in ringing speeches in
Paris did much to pave the way for the good understanding which later
developed into the entente cordiale.

The glitter and parade of the Jubilee festivities soon gave way to a
sterner phase of empire. For years South Africa had been in ferment
owing to the conflicting interests of narrow, fanatical, often
corrupt Boer leaders, greedy Anglo-Jewish mining magnates, and British
statesmen-Rhodes, Milner, Chamberlain--dominated by the imperial idea
and eager for an "all-red" South Africa. Eventually an impasse was
reached over the question of the rights and privileges of British
subjects in the Transvaal Republic. On October 9, 1899, President Kruger
issued his fateful ultimatum and war began.

What would be Canada's attitude toward this imperial problem? She had
never before taken part in an overseas war. Neither her own safety nor
the safety of the mother country was considered to be at stake. Yet war
had not been formally declared before a demand arose among Canadians
that their country should take a hand in rescuing the victims of Boer
tyranny. The Venezuela incident and the recent Jubilee ceremonies had
fanned imperialist sentiment. The growing prosperity was increasing
national pride and making many eager to abandon the attitude of colonial
dependence in foreign affairs. The desire to emulate the United States,
which had just won more or less glory in its little war with Spain, had
its influence in some quarters. Belief in the justice of the British
cause was practically universal, thanks to the skillful manipulation
of the press by the war party in South Africa. Leading newspapers
encouraged the campaign for participation. Parliament was not in
session, and the Government hesitated to intervene, but the swelling
tide of public opinion soon warranted immediate action. Three days after
the declaration of war an order in council was passed providing for
a contingent of one thousand men. Other infantry battalions, Mounted
Rifles, and batteries of artillery were dispatched later. Lord
Strathcona, formerly Donald Smith of the Canadian Pacific syndicate, by
a deed recalling feudal days, provided the funds to send overseas the
Strathcona Horse, roughriders from the Canadian West. In the last
years of the war the South African Constabulary drew many recruits from
Canada. All told, over seven thousand Canadians crossed half the world
to share in the struggle on the South African veldt.

The Canadian forces held their own with any in the campaign. The first
contingent fought under Lord Roberts in the campaign for the relief of
Kimberley; and it was two charges by Canadian troops, charges that cost
heavily in killed and wounded, that forced the surrender of General
Cronje, brought to bay at Paardeberg. One Canadian battery shared in the
honor of raising the siege of Mafeking, where Baden-Powell was besieged,
and both contingents marched with Lord Roberts from Bloemfontein to
Pretoria and fought hard and well at Doornkop and in many a skirmish.
Perhaps the politic generosity of the British leaders and the patriotic
bias of correspondents exaggerated the importance of the share of the
Canadian troops in the whole campaign; but their courage, initiative,
and endurance were tested and proved beyond all question. Paardeberg
sent a thrill of pride and of sorrow through Canada.

The only province which stood aloof from wholehearted participation in
the war was Quebec. Many French Canadians had been growing nervous over
the persistent campaign of the imperialists. They exhibited a certain
unwillingness to take on responsibilities, perhaps a survival of the
dependence which colonialism had bred, a dawning aspiration toward an
independent place in the world's work, and a disposition to draw
tighter racial and religious lines in order to offset the emphasis which
imperialists placed on Anglo-Saxon ties. Now their sympathies went out
to a people, like themselves an alien minority brought under British
rule, and in this attitude they were strengthened by the almost
unanimous verdict of the neutral world against British policy. Laurier
tried to steer a middle course, but the attacks of ultra-imperialists
in Ontario and of ultra-nationalists in Quebec, led henceforward by a
brilliant and eloquent grandson of Papineau, Henri Bourassa,
hampered him at every turn. The South African War gave a new unity to
English-speaking Canada, but it widened the gap between the French and
English sections.

The part which Australia and New Zealand, like Canada, had taken in
the war gave new urgency to the question of imperial relations. English
imperialists were convinced that the time was ripe for a great advance
toward centralization, and they were eager to crystallize in permanent
institutions the imperial sentiment called forth by the war. When,
therefore, the fourth Colonial Conference was summoned to meet in London
in 1902 on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VII, Chamberlain
urged with all his force and keenness a wide programme of centralized
action. "Very great expectations," he declared in his opening address,
"have been formed as to the results which may accrue from our meeting."
The expectations, however, were doomed to disappointment. He and those
who shared his hopes had failed to recognize that the war had
called forth a new national consciousness in the Dominions, as the
self-governing colonies now came to be termed, even more than it had
developed imperial sentiment. In the smaller colonies, New Zealand,
Natal, Cape of Good Hope, the old attitude of colonial dependence
survived in larger measure; but in Canada and in Australia, now
federated into commonwealths, national feeling was uppermost.

Chamberlain brought forward once more his proposal for an imperial
council, to be advisory at first and later to attain power to tax and
legislate for the whole Empire, but he found no support. Instead, the
Conference itself was made a more permanent instrument of imperial
cooperation by a provision that it should meet at least every four
years. The essential difference was that the Conference was merely a
meeting of independent Governments on an equal footing, each claiming to
be as much "His Majesty's Government" as any other, whereas the council
which Chamberlain urged in vain would have been a new Government,
supreme over all the Empire and dominated by the British
representatives. Chamberlain then suggested more centralized means
of defense, grants to the British navy, and the putting of a definite
proportion of colonial militia at the disposal of the British War
Office for overseas service. The Cape and Natal promised naval grants;
Australia and New Zealand increased their contributions for the
maintenance of a squadron in Pacific waters; but Canada held back. The
smaller colonies were sympathetic to the militia proposal; but Canada
and Australia rejected it on the grounds that it was "objectionable in
principle, as derogating from the powers of self-government enjoyed
by them, and would be calculated to impede the general improvement
in training and organization of their defense forces." Chamberlain's
additional proposal of free trade within the Empire and of a common
tariff against all foreign countries found little support. That each
part of the Empire should control its own tariff and that it should make
what concessions it wished on British imports, either as a part of a
reciprocal bargain or as a free gift, remained a fixed idea in the minds
of the leaders of the Dominions. Throughout the sessions it was Laurier
rather than Chamberlain who dominated the Conference.

Balked in his desire to effect political or military centralization,
Chamberlain turned anew to the possibilities of trade alliance. His
tariff reform campaign of 1903, which was a sequel to the Colonial
Conference of 1902, proposed that Great Britain set up a tariff,
incidentally to protect her own industries and to have matter for
bargaining with foreign powers, but mainly in order to keep the colonies
within her orbit by offering them special terms. In this way the Empire
would become once more self-sufficient. The issue thus thrust upon Great
Britain and the Empire in general was primarily a contest between free
traders and protectionists, not between the supporters of cooperation
and the supporters of centralization. On this basis the issue was fought
out in Great Britain and resulted in the overwhelming victory of free
trade and the Liberal party, aided as they were by the popular reaction
against the jingoist policy which had culminated in the war. When the
fifth Conference, now termed Imperial instead of Colonial, met in 1907,
there was much impassioned advocacy of preference and protection on the
part of Alfred Deakin of Australia and Sir L.S. Jameson of the Cape;
but the British representatives stuck to their guns and, in Winston
Churchill's phrase, the door remained "banged, barred, and bolted"
against both policies. At this conference Laurier took the ground that,
while Canada would be prepared to bargain preference for preference, the
people of Great Britain must decide what fiscal system would best serve
their own interests. A consistent advocate of home rule, he was willing,
unlike some of his colleagues, from the other Dominions, to let the
United Kingdom control its own affairs.

The defense issue had slumbered since the Boer War. Now the unbounded
ambitions of Germany gave it startling urgency. It was about 1908
that the British public first became seriously alarmed over the danger
involved in the lessening margin of superiority of the British over the
German navy. The alarm was echoed throughout the Dominions. The Kaiser's
challenge threatened the safety not only of the mother country but of
every part of the Empire. Hitherto the Dominions had done little in
the way of naval defense, though they had one by one assumed full
responsibility for their land defense. The feeling had been growing
that they should take a larger share of the common burden. Two factors,
however, had blocked advance in this direction. The British Government
had claimed and exercised full control of the issues of peace and
war, and the Dominions were reluctant to assume responsibility for
the consequences of a foreign policy which they could not direct. The
hostility of the British Admiralty, on strategic and political grounds,
to the plan of local Dominion navies, had prevented progress on the most
feasible lines. The deadlock was a serious one. Now the imminence of
danger compelled a solution. Taking the lead in this instance in the
working out of the policy of colonial nationalism, Australia had already
insisted upon abandoning the barren and inadequate policy of making a
cash contribution for the support of a British squadron in Australasian
waters and had established a local navy, manned, maintained, and
controlled by the Commonwealth. Canada decided to follow her example.
In March, 1909, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously adopted
a resolution in favor of establishing a Canadian naval service to
cooperate in close relation with the British navy. During the summer a
special conference was held in London attended by ministers from all the
Dominions. At this conference the Admiralty abandoned its old position;
and it was agreed that Australia and Canada should establish local
forces, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, with auxiliary ships and
naval bases.

When the Canadian Parliament met in 1910, Sir Wilfrid Laurier submitted
a Naval Service Bill, providing for the establishment of local fleets,
of which the smaller vessels were to be built in Canada. The ships were
to be under the control of the Dominion Government, which might, in case
of emergency, place them at the disposal of the British Admiralty. The
bill was passed in March. In the autumn two cruisers, the Rainbow and
the Niobe, were bought from Britain to serve as training ships. In the
following spring a naval college was opened at Halifax, and tenders
were called for the construction, in Canada, of five cruisers and six
destroyers. In June, 1911, at the regular Imperial Conference of
that year, an agreement was reached regarding the boundaries of
the Australian and Canadian stations and uniformity of training and
discipline.

Then came the reciprocity fight and the defeat of the Government. No
tenders had been finally accepted, and the new Administration of Premier
Borden was free to frame its own policy.

The naval issue had now become a party question. The policy of
a Dominion navy, a policy which was the logical extension of the
principles of colonial nationalism and imperial cooperation which
had guided imperial development for many years, was attacked by
ultra-imperialists in the English-speaking provinces as strategically
unsound and as leading inevitably to separation from the Empire. It was
also attacked by the Nationalists of Quebec, the ultra-colonialists or
provincialists, as they might more truly be termed, under the vigorous
leadership of Henri Bourassa, as yet another concession to imperialism
and to militarism. In November, 1910, by alarming the habitant by
pictures of his sons being dragged away by naval press gangs, the
Nationalists succeeded in defeating the Liberal candidate in a
by-election in Drummond-Arthabaska, at one time Laurier's own
constituency. In the general election which followed in 1911, the same
issue cost the Liberals a score of seats in Quebec.

When, therefore, the new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, faced the
issue, he endeavored to frame a policy which would suit both wings
of his following. In 1912 he proposed as an emergency measure to
appropriate a sum sufficient to build three dreadnoughts for the British
navy, subject to recall if at any time the Canadian people decided
to use them as the nucleus of a Canadian fleet. At the same time he
undertook to submit to the electorate his permanent naval policy, as
soon as it was determined. What that permanent policy would be he was
unwilling to say, but the Prime Minister made clear his own leanings
by insisting that it would take half a century to form a Canadian navy,
which at best would be a poor and weak substitute for the organization
the Empire already possessed. The contribution to the British navy
satisfied the ultra-imperialists, while the promise of a referendum and
the call for money alone, and not men, appealed to the Nationalist wing.
Under the impetuous control of its new head, Winston Churchill, the
British Admiralty showed that it had repented its brief conversion
to the Dominion navy policy, by preparing an elaborate memorandum to
support Borden's proposals, and also by formulating plans for imperial
flying squadrons to be supplied by the Dominions, which made clear
its wish to continue the centralizing policy permanently. The Liberal
Opposition vigorously denounced the whole dreadnought programme,
advocating instead two Canadian fleet units somewhat larger than at
first contemplated. Their obstruction was overcome in the Commons by the
introduction of the closure, but the Liberal majority in the Senate, on
the motion of Sir George Ross, a former Premier of Ontario, threw
out the bill by insisting that it should not be passed before being
"submitted to the judgment of the country." This challenge the
Government did not accept. Until the outbreak of the war no further
steps were taken either to arrange for contribution or to establish a
Canadian navy, though the naval college at Halifax was continued, and
the training cruisers were maintained in a half-hearted way.

In the Imperial Conference of 1911, one more attempt was made to set
up a central governing authority in London. Sir Joseph Ward, of New
Zealand, acting as the mouthpiece of the imperial federationists, urged
the establishment, first of an Imperial Council of State and later of
an Imperial Parliament. His proposals met no support. "It is absolutely
impracticable," was Laurier's verdict. "Any scheme of representation--no
matter what you call it, parliament or council--of the overseas
Dominions, must give them so very small a representation that it would
be practically of no value," declared Premier Morris of Newfoundland.
"It is not a practical scheme," Premier Fisher of Australia agreed;
"our present system of responsible government has not broken down." "The
creation of some body with centralized authority over the whole Empire,"
Premier Botha of South Africa cogently insisted, "would be a step
entirely antagonistic to the policy of Great Britain which has been so
successful in the past .... It is the policy of decentralization which
has made the Empire--the power granted to its various peoples to govern
themselves." Even Premier Asquith of the United Kingdom declared the
proposals "fatal to the very fundamental conditions on which our empire
has been built up and carried on."

Stronger than any logic was the presence of Louis Botha in the
conferences of 1907 and 1911. On the former occasion it was only five
years since he had been in arms against Great Britain. The courage and
vision of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in granting full and immediate
self-government to the conquered Boer republics had been justified by
the results. Once more freedom proved the only enduring basis of empire.
Botha's task in attempting to make Boer and Briton work together, first
in the Transvaal, and, after 1910, in the Union of South Africa, had not
been an easy one. Attacked by extremists from both directions, he
faced much the same difficulties as Laurier, and he found in Laurier's
friendship, counsel, and example much that stood him in good stead in
the days of stress to come.

Not less important than the relations with the United Kingdom in this
period were the relations with the United States. The Venezuela episode
was the turning point in the relations between the United States and the
British Empire. Both in Washington and in London men had been astounded
to find themselves on the verge of war. The danger passed, but the shock
awoke thousands to a realization of all that the two peoples had in
common and to the need of concerted effort to remove the sources
of friction. Then hard on the heels of this episode followed the
Spanish-American War.* Not the least of its by-products was a remarkable
improvement in the relations of the English-speaking nations. The course
of the war, the intrigues of European courts to secure intervention on
behalf of Spain, and the lining up of a British squadron beside Dewey
in Manila Bay when a German Admiral blustered, revealed Great Britain
as the one trustworthy friend the United States possessed abroad. The
annexation of the Philippines and the definite entry of the United
States upon world politics broke down the irresponsible isolation
which British ministers had found so much of a barrier to diplomatic
accommodations. With John Hay and later Elihu Root at the State
Department, and Lansdowne and Grey at the Foreign Office in London,
there began an era of good feeling between the two countries.

     * See "The Path of Empire".

Ottawa and Washington were somewhat slower in coming to terms. Many
difficulties can arise along a three thousand mile border, and with a
people so sure of themselves as the Americans were at this period and a
people so sensitive to any infringements of their national rights as
the Canadians were, petty differences often loomed large. The Laurier
Government, therefore, proposed shortly after its accession to power in
1896 that an attempt should be made to clear away all outstanding issues
and to effect a trade agreement. A Joint High Commission was constituted
in 1898. The members from the United States were Senator Fairbanks,
Senator Gray, Representative Nelson Dingley, General Foster, J.A.
Kasson, and T.J. Coolidge of the State Department. Great Britain was
represented by Lord Herschell, who acted as chairman, Newfoundland
by Sir James Winter, and Canada by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Richard
Cartwright, Sir Louis Davies, and John Charlton, M.P.

The Commission held prolonged sittings, first at Quebec and later
at Washington, and reached tentative agreement on nearly all of the
troublesome questions at issue. The bonding privileges on both sides the
border were to be given an assured basis; the unneighborly alien labor
laws were to be relaxed; the Rush-Bagot Convention regarding armament
on the Great Lakes was to be revised; Canadian vessels were to
abandon pelagic sealing in Bering Sea for a money compensation; and a
reciprocity treaty covering natural products and some manufactures was
sketched out. Yet no agreement followed. One issue, the Alaska boundary,
proved insoluble, and as no agreement was acceptable which did not
cover every difference, the Commission never again assembled after its
adjournment in February, 1899.

The boundary between Alaska and the Dominion was the only bit of the
border line not yet determined. As in former cases of boundary disputes,
the inaccuracies of map makers, the ambiguities of diplomats, the clash
of local interests, and stiff-necked national pride made a settlement
difficult. In 1825 Russia and Great Britain had signed a treaty which
granted Russia a long panhandle strip down the Pacific coast. With
the purchase of Alaska in 1867 the United States succeeded to Russia's
claim. With the growth of settlement in Canada this long barrier down
half of her Pacific coast was found to be irksome. Attempt after attempt
to have the line determined only added to the stock of memorials in
official pigeonholes. Then came the discovery of gold in the Klondike
in 1896, and the question of easy access by sea to the Canadian back
country became an urgent one. Canada offered to compromise, admitting
the American title to the chief ports on Lynn Canal, Dyea and Skagway,
if Pyramid Harbor were held Canadian. She urged arbitration on the model
the United States had dictated in the Venezuela dispute. But the United
States was in possession of the most important points. Its people
believed the Canadian claims had been trumped up when the Klondike
fields were opened. The Puget Sound cities wanted no breach in their
monopoly of the supply trade to the north. The only concession the
United States would make was to refer the dispute to a commission of
six, three from each country, with the proviso that no area settled by
Americans should in any event pass into other bands. Canada felt that
arbitration under these conditions would either end in deadlock, leaving
the United States in possession, or in concession by one or more of
the British representatives, and so declined to accept the proposed
arrangement.

Finally, in 1903, agreement was reached between London and Washington
to accept the tribunal proposed by the United States, which in turn
withdrew its veto on the transfer of any settled area. Canada's
reluctant consent was won by a provision that the members of the
tribunal should be "impartial jurists of repute," sworn to render a
judicial verdict. When Elihu Root, Senator Lodge, and Senator Turner
were named as the American representatives, Ottawa protested that
eminent and honorable as they were, their public attitude on this
question made it impossible to consider them "impartial jurists." The
Canadian Government in return nominated three judges, Lord Alverstone,
Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Louis Jette, of Quebec, and Mr.
Justice Armour, succeeded on his death by A. B. Aylesworth, a leader
of the Ontario bar. The tribunal met in London, where the case was
thoroughly argued.

The Treaty of 1825 had provided that the southern boundary should follow
the Portland Canal to the fifty-sixth parallel of latitude and thence
the summits of the mountains parallel to the coast, with the stipulation
that if the summit of the mountains anywhere proved to be more than ten
marine leagues from the ocean, a line drawn parallel to the windings of
the coast not more than ten leagues distant should form the boundary.
Three questions arose: What was the Portland Canal? Did the treaty
assure Russia an unbroken strip by making the boundary run round the
ends of deep inlets? Did mountains exist parallel to the coast within
ten leagues' distance? In October these questions received their answer.
Lord Alverstone and the three American members decided in favor of the
United States on the main issues. The two Canadian, representatives
refused to sign the award and denounced it as unjudicial and
unwarranted.

The decision set Canada aflame. Lord Alverstone was denounced in
unmeasured terms. From Atlantic to Pacific the charge was echoed that
once more the interests of Canada had been sacrificed by Britain on
the altar of Anglo-American friendship. The outburst was not understood
abroad. It was not, as United States opinion imagined, merely childish
petulance or the whining of a poor loser. It was against Great Britain,
not against the United States, that the criticism was directed. It was
not the decision, but the way in which it was made, that roused deep
anger. The decision on the main issue, that the line ran back of even
the deepest inlets and barred Canada from a single harbor, though
unwelcome, was accepted as a judicial verdict and has since been
little questioned. The finding that the boundary should follow certain
mountains behind those Canada urged, but short of the ten league line,
was attacked by the Canadian representatives as a compromise, and its
judicial character is certainly open to some doubt. But it was on the
third finding that the thunders broke. The United States had contended
that the Portland Channel of the treaty makers ran south of four islands
which lay east of Prince of Wales Island, and Canada that it ran north
of these islands. Lord Alverstone, after joining in a judgment with
the Canadian commissioners that it ran north, suddenly, without any
conference with them, and, as the wording of the award showed, by
agreement with the United States representatives, announced that it ran
where no one had ever suggested it could run, north of two and south
of two, thus dividing the land in dispute. The islands were of little
importance even strategically, but the incontrovertible evidence that
instead of a judicial finding a political compromise had been effected
was held of much importance. After a time the storm died down, but it
revealed one unmistakable fact: Canadian nationalism was growing fully
as fast as Canadian imperialism.

The relations between Canada and the United States now came to show the
effect of increasingly close business connections. The northward trek
of tens of thousands of American farmers was under way. United States
capitalists began to invest heavily in farm and timber lands.
Factory after factory opened a Canadian branch. Ten years later these
investments exceeded six hundred millions. In the West, James J. Hill
was planning the expansion of the Great Northern system throughout the
prairie provinces and was securing an interest in the great Crow's Nest
Pass coal fields. Tourist travel multiplied. The two peoples came
to know each other better than ever before, and with knowledge many
prejudices and misunderstandings vanished. Canada's growing prosperity
did not merely bring greater individual intercourse; it made the United
States as a whole less patronizing in its dealings with its neighbor and
Canada less querulous and thin-skinned.

In this more favorable temper many old issues were cleared off the
slate. The northeastern fisheries question, revived by a conflict
between Newfoundland and the United States as to treaty privileges,
was referred to the Hague Court in 1909. The verdict of the arbitrators
recognized a measure of right in the contentions of both sides. A
detailed settlement was prescribed which was accepted without demur in
the United States, Newfoundland, and Canada alike. Pelagic sealing
in the North Pacific was barred in 1911 by an international agreement
between the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia. Less
success attended the attempt to arrange joint action to regulate and
conserve the fisheries of the Great Lakes and the salmon fisheries of
the Pacific, for the treaty drawn up in 1911 by the experts from both
countries failed to pass the United States Senate.

But the most striking development of the decade was the businesslike
and neighborly solution found for the settlement of the boundary waters
controversy. The growing demands for the use of streams such as the
Niagara, the St. Lawrence, and the Sault for power purposes, and of
western border rivers for irrigation schemes, made it essential to take
joint action to reconcile not merely the conflicting claims from the
opposite sides of the border but the conflicting claims of power and
navigation and other interests in each country. In 1905 a temporary
waterways commission was appointed, and four years later the Boundary
Waters Treaty provided for the establishment of a permanent Joint High
Commission, consisting of three representatives from each country,
and with authority over all cases of use, obstruction, or diversion of
border waters. Individual citizens of either country were allowed to
present their case directly before the Commission, an innovation in
international practice. Still more significant of the new spirit was
the inclusion in this treaty of a clause providing for reference to
the Commission, with the consent of the United States Senate and the
Dominion Cabinet, of any matter whatever at issue between the two
countries. With little discussion and as a matter of course, the two
democracies, in the closing years of a full century of peace, thus made
provision for the sane and friendly settlement of future line-fence
disputes.

The chief barrier to good relations was the customs tariff.
Protectionism, and the attitude of which it was born and which it bred
in turn, was still firmly entrenched in both countries. Tariff bars, it
is true, had not been able to prevent the rapid growth of trade; imports
from the United States to Canada had grown especially fast and Canada
now ranked third in the list of the Republic's customers. Yet in many
ways the tariff hindered free intercourse. Though every dictate of
self-interest and good sense demanded a reduction of duties, Canada
would not and did not take the initiative. Time and again she had
sought reciprocity, only to have her proposals rejected, often with
contemptuous indifference. When Sir Wilfrid Laurier announced in 1900
that there would be no more pilgrimages to Washington, he voiced the
almost unanimous opinion of a people whose pride had been hurt by
repeated rebuffs.

Meanwhile protectionist sentiment had grown stronger in Canada. The
opening of the West had given an expanding market for eastern factories
and had seemingly justified the National Policy. The Liberals, the
traditional upholders of freer trade, after some initial redemptions
of their pledges, had compromised with the manufacturing interests. The
Conservatives, still more protectionist in temper, voiced in Parliament
little criticism of this policy, and the free trade elements among
the farmers were as yet unorganized and inarticulate. Signs of this
protectionist revival, which had in it, as in the seventies, an element
of nationalism, were many. A four-story tariff was erected. The lowest
rates were those granted the United Kingdom; then came the intermediate
tariff, for the products of countries giving Canada special terms; next
the general tariff; and, finally, the surtax for use against powers
discriminating in any special degree against the Dominion. The provinces
one by one forbade the export of pulp wood cut on Crown Lands, in
order to assure its manufacture into wood pulp or paper in Canada. The
Dominion in 1907 secured the abrogation of the postal convention
made with the United States in 1875 providing for the reciprocal free
distribution of second class mail matter originating in the other
country. This step was taken at the instance of Canadian manufacturers,
alarmed at the effect of the advertising pages of United States
magazines in directing trade across the line. Yet even with such
developments, the Canadian tariff remained lower than its neighbor's.

In the United States the tendency was in the other direction. With the
growth of cities, the interests of the consumers of foods outweighed the
influence of the producers. Manufacturers in many cases had reached the
export stage, where foreign markets, cheap food, and cheap raw materials
were more necessary than a protected home market. The "muckrakers" were
at the height of their activity; and the tariff, as one instrument of
corruption and privilege, was suffering with the popular condemnation
of all big interests. United States newspapers were eager for free wood
pulp and cheaper paper, just as Canadian newspapers defended the policy
of checking export. It was not surprising, therefore, that reciprocity
with Canada, as one means of increasing trade and reducing the tariff,
took on new popularity. New England was the chief seat of the movement,
with Henry M. Whitney and Eugene N. Foss as its most persistent
advocates. Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, and other border cities were also
active.

Official action soon followed this unofficial campaign. Curiously
enough, it came as an unexpected by-product of a further experiment
in protection, the Payne-Aldrich tariff. For the first time in the
experience of the United States this tariff incorporated the principle
of minimum and maximum schedules. The maximum rates, fixed at
twenty-five per cent ad valorem above the normal or minimum rates, were
to be enforced upon the goods of any country which had not, before March
10, 1910, satisfied the President that it did not discriminate against
the products of the United States. One by one the various nations
demonstrated this to President Taft's satisfaction or with wry faces
made the readjustments necessary. At last Canada alone remained. The
United States conceded that the preference to the United Kingdom did
not constitute discrimination, but it insisted that it should enjoy
the special rates recently extended to France by treaty. In Canada this
demand was received with indignation. Its tariff rates were much lower
than those which the United States imposed, and its purchases in that
country were twice as great as its sales. The demand was based on a
sudden and complete reversal of the traditional American interpretation
of the most favored nation policy. The President admitted the force of
Canada's contentions, but the law left him no option. Fortunately it did
leave him free to decide as to the adequacy of any concessions, and thus
agreement was made possible at the eleventh hour. At the President's
suggestion a conference at Albany was arranged, and on the 30th of
March a bargain was struck. Canada conceded to the United States its
intermediate tariff rates on thirteen minor schedules--chinaware, nuts,
prunes, and whatnot. These were accepted as equivalent to the special
terms given France, and Canada was certified as being entitled to
minimum rates. The United States had saved its face. Then to complete
the comedy, Canada immediately granted the same concessions to all other
countries, that is, made the new rates part of the general tariff.
The United States ended where it began, in receipt of no special
concessions. The motions required had been gone through; phantom
reductions had been made to meet a phantom discrimination.

This was only the beginning of attempts at accommodation. The threat of
tariff war had called forth in the United States loud protests against
any such reversion to economic barbarism. President Taft realized that
he had antagonized the growing low-tariff sentiment of the country by
his support of the Payne-Aldrich tariff and was eager to set himself
right. A week before the March negotiations were concluded, a Democratic
candidate had carried a strongly Republican congressional district in
Massachusetts on a platform of reciprocity with Canada. The President,
therefore, proposed a bold stroke. He made a sweeping offer of better
trade relations. Negotiations were begun at Ottawa and concluded
in Washington. In January, 1911, announcement was made that a broad
agreement had been effected. Grain, fruit, and vegetables, dairy and
most farm products, fish, hewn timber and sawn lumber, and several
minerals were put on the free list. A few manufactures were also made
free, and the duties on meats, flour, coal, agricultural implements, and
other products were substantially reduced. The compact was to be carried
out, not by treaty, but by concurrent legislation. Canada was to extend
the same terms to the most favored nations by treaty, and to all parts
of the British Empire by policy.

For fifty years the administrations of the two countries had never been
so nearly at one. More difficulty was met with in the legislatures. In
Congress, farmers and fishermen, standpat Republicans and Progressives
hostile to the Administration, waged war against the bargain. It was
only in a special session, and with the aid of Democratic votes and a
Washington July sun, that the opposition was overcome. In the Canadian
Parliament, after some initial hesitation, the Conservatives attacked
the proposal. The Government had a safe majority, but the Opposition
resorted to obstruction; and late in July, Parliament was suddenly
dissolved and the Government appealed to the country.

When the bargain was first concluded, the Canadian Government had
imagined it would meet little opposition, for it was precisely the type
of agreement that Government after Government, Conservative as well as
Liberal, had sought in vain for over forty years. For a day or two that
expectation was justified. Then the forces of opposition rallied, timid
questioning gave way to violent denunciation, and at last agreement and
Government alike were swept away in a flood of popular antagonism.

One reason for this result was that the verdict was given in a general
election, not in a referendum. The fate of the Government was involved;
its general record was brought up for review; party ambitions and
passions were stirred to the utmost. Fifteen years, of office-holding
had meant the accumulation of many scandals, a slackening in
administrative efficiency, and the cooling by official compromise of the
ardent faith of the Liberalism of the earlier day. The Government had
failed to bring in enough new blood. The Opposition fought with the
desperation of fifteen years of fasting and was better served by its
press.

Of the side issues introduced into the campaign, the most important were
the naval policy in Quebec and the racial and religious issue in the
English-speaking provinces. The Government had to face what Sir Wilfrid
Laurier termed "the unholy alliance" of Roman Catholic Nationalists
under Bourassa in Quebec and Protestant Imperialists in Ontario. In
the French-speaking districts the Government was denounced for allowing
Canada to be drawn into the vortex of militarism and imperialism and
for sacrificing the interests of Roman Catholic schools in the West. On
every hand the naval policy was attacked as inevitably bringing in its
train conscription to fight European wars a contention hotly denied
by the Liberals. The Conservative campaign managers made a working
arrangement with the Nationalists as to candidates and helped
liberally in circulating Bourassa's newspaper, Le Devoir. On the back
"concessions" of Ontario a quieter but no less effective campaign was
carried on against the domination of Canadian politics by a French Roman
Catholic province and a French Roman Catholic Prime Minister. In vain
the Liberals appealed to national unity or started back fires in Ontario
by insisting that a vote for Borden meant a vote for Bourassa. The
Conservative-Nationalist alliance cost the Government many seats in
Quebec and apparently did not frighten Ontario.

Reciprocity, however, was the principal issue everywhere except in
Quebec. Powerful forces were arrayed against it. Few manufactures
had been put on the free list, but the argument that the reciprocity
agreement was the thin edge of the wedge rallied the organized
manufacturers in almost unbroken hostile array. The railways, fearful
that western traffic would be diverted to United States roads, opposed
the agreement vigorously under the leadership of the ex-American
chairman of the board of directors of the Canadian Pacific, Sir William
Van Horne, who made on this occasion one of his few public entries into
politics. The banks, closely involved in the manufacturing and railway
interests, threw their weight in the same direction. They were aided
by the prevalence of protectionist sentiment in the eastern cities and
industrial towns, which were at the same stage of development and in the
same mood as the cities of the United States some decades earlier. The
Liberal fifteen-year compromise with protection made it difficult in a
seven weeks' campaign to revive a desire for freer trade. The prosperity
of the country and the cry, "Let well enough alone," told powerfully
against the bargain. Yet merely from the point of view of economic
advantage, the popular verdict would probably have been in its favor.
The United States market no longer loomed so large as it had in the
eighties, but its value was undeniable. Farmer, fisherman, and miner
stood to gain substantially by the lowering of the bars into the richest
market in the world. Every farm paper in Canada and all the important
farm organizations supported reciprocity. Its opponents, therefore,
did not trust to a direct frontal attack. Their strategy was to divert
attention from the economic advantages by raising the cry of political
danger. The red herring of annexation was drawn across the trail, and
many a farmer followed it to the polling booth.

From the outset, then, the opponents of reciprocity concentrated
their attacks on its political perils. They denounced the reciprocity
agreement as the forerunner of annexation, the deathblow to Canadian
nationality and British connection. They prophesied that the trade and
intercourse built up between the East and the West of Canada by years of
sacrifice and striving would shrivel away, and that each section of the
Dominion would become a mere appendage to the adjacent section of the
United States. Where the treasure was, there would the heart be also.
After some years of reciprocity, the channels of Canadian trade would
be so changed that a sudden return to high protection on the part of the
United States would disrupt industry and a mere threat of such a change
would lead to a movement for complete union.

This prophecy was strengthened by apposite quotations showing the
existing drift of opinion in the United States. President Taft's
reference to the "light and imperceptible bond uniting the Dominion
with the mother country" and his "parting of the ways" speech received
sinister interpretations. Speaker Champ Clark's announcement that he
was in favor of the agreement because he hoped "to see the day when the
American flag will float over every square foot of the British North
American possessions" was worth tens of thousands of votes. The
anti-reciprocity press of Canada seized upon these utterances, magnified
them, and sometimes, it was charged, inspired or invented them. Every
American crossroads politician who found a useful peroration in a vision
of the Stars and Stripes floating from Panama to the North Pole was
represented as a statesman of national power voicing a universal
sentiment. The action of the Hearst papers in sending pro-reciprocity
editions into the border cities of Canada made many votes--but not for
reciprocity. The Canadian public proved that it was unable to suffer
fools gladly. It was vain to argue that all men of weight in the United
States had come to understand and to respect Canada's independent
ambitions; that in any event it was not what the United States thought
but what Canada thought that mattered; or that the Canadian farmer who
sold a bushel of good wheat to a United States miller no more sold his
loyalty with it than a Kipling selling a volume of verse or a Canadian
financier selling a block of stock in the same market. The flag was
waved, and the Canadian voter, mindful of former American slights
and backed by newly arrived Englishmen admirably organized by the
anti-reciprocity forces, turned against any "entangling alliance." The
prosperity of the country made it safe to express resentment of the
slights of half a century or fear of this too sudden friendliness.

The result of the elections, which were held on September 21, 1911,
was the crushing defeat of the Liberal party. A Liberal majority of
forty-four in a house of two hundred and twenty-one members was turned
into a Conservative majority of forty-nine. Eight cabinet ministers went
down to defeat. The Government had a slight majority in the Maritime
Provinces and Quebec, and a large majority in the prairie West, but the
overwhelming victory of the Opposition in Ontario, Manitoba, and British
Columbia turned the day.

The appeal to loyalty revealed much that was worthy and much that
was sordid in Canadian life. It was well that a sturdy national
self-reliance should be developed and expressed in the face of American
prophets of "manifest destiny," and that men should be ready to set
ideals above pocket. It was unfortunate that in order to demonstrate a
loyalty which might have been taken for granted economic advantage
was sacrificed; and it was disturbing to note the ease with which
big interests with unlimited funds for organizing, advertising, and
newspaper campaigning, could pervert national sentiment to serve their
own ends. Yet this was possibly a stage through which Canada, like every
young nation, had to pass; and the gentle art of twisting the lion's
tail had proved a model for the practice of plucking the eagle's
feathers.

The growth of Canada brought her into closer touch with lands across the
sea. Men, money, and merchandise came from East and West; and with their
coming new problems faced the Government of the Dominion. With Europe
they were trade questions to solve, and with Asia the more delicate
issues arising out of oriental immigration.

In 1907 the Canadian Government had established an intermediate tariff,
with rates halfway between the general and the British preferential
tariffs, for the express purpose of bargaining with other powers. In
that year an agreement based substantially on these intermediate rates
was negotiated with France, though protectionist opposition in the
French Senate prevented ratification until 1910. Similar reciprocal
arrangements were concluded in 1910 with Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Italy. The manner of the negotiation was as significant as the matter.
In the case of France the treaty was negotiated in Paris by two Canadian
ministers, W.S. Fielding and L.P. Brodeur, appointed plenipotentiaries
of His Majesty for that purpose, with the British Ambassador associated
in what Mr. Arthur Balfour termed a "purely technical" capacity. In
the case of the other countries even this formal recognition of the old
colonial status was abandoned. The agreement with Italy was negotiated
in Canada between "the Royal Consul of Italy for Canada, representing
the government of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Minister of Finance
of Canada, representing His Excellency the Governor General acting in
conjunction with the King's Privy Council for Canada." The conclusions
in these later instances were embodied in conventions, rather than
formal treaties.

With one country, however, tariff war reigned instead of treaty peace.
In 1899 Germany subjected Canadian exports to her general or maximum
tariff, because the Dominion refused to grant her the preferential rates
reserved for members of the British Empire group of countries. After
four years' deliberation Canada eventually retaliated by imposing on
German goods a special surtax of thirty-three and one-third per
cent. The trade of both countries suffered, but Germany's, being more
specialized, much the more severely. After seven years' strife, Germany
took the initiative in proposing a truce. In 1910 Canada agreed to admit
German goods at the rates of the general--not the intermediate--tariff,
while Germany in return waived her protest against the British
preference and granted minimum rates on the most important Canadian
exports.

Oriental immigration had been an issue in Canada ever since Chinese
navvies had been imported in the early eighties to work on the
government sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mine owners, fruit
farmers, and contractors were anxious that the supply should continue
unchecked; but, as in the United States, the economic objections of the
labor unions and the political objections of the advocates of a "White
Canada" carried the day.

Chinese immigration had been restricted in 1885 by a head tax of $50 on
all immigrants save officials, merchants, or scholars; in 1901 this tax
was doubled; and in 1904 it was raised to $500. In each case the
tax proved a barrier only for a year or two, when wages would rise
sufficiently to warrant Orientals paying the higher toll to enter the
Promised Land. Japanese immigrants did not come in large numbers until
1906, when the activities of employment companies brought seven thousand
Japanese by way of Hawaii. Agitators from the Pacific States fanned
the flames of opposition in British Columbia, and anti-Chinese and
anti-Japanese riots broke out in Vancouver in 1907. The Dominion
Government then grappled with the question. Japan's national
sensitiveness and her position as an ally of Great Britain called for
diplomatic handling. A member of the Dominion Cabinet, Rodolphe Lemieux,
succeeded in 1907 in negotiating at Tokio an agreement by which Japan
herself undertook to restrict the number of passports issued annually to
emigrants to Canada.

The Hindu migration, which began in 1907, gave rise to a still more
delicate situation. What did the British Empire mean, many a Hindu
asked, if British subjects were to be barred from British lands? The
only reply was that the British Government which still ruled India no
longer ruled the Dominions, and that it was on the Dominions that
the responsibility for the exclusion policy must rest. In 1909 Canada
suggested that the Indian Government itself should limit emigration,
but this policy did not meet with approval at the time. Failing in this
measure, the Laurier Government fell back on a general clause in the
Immigration Act prohibiting the entrance of immigrants except by direct
passage from the country of origin and on a continuous ticket, a rule
which effectually barred the Hindu because of the lack of any direct
steamship line between India and Canada. An Order-in-Council further
required that immigrants from all Asiatic countries must possess at
least $200 on entering Canada. The Borden Government supplemented these
restrictions by a special Order-in-Council in 1913 prohibiting the
landing of artisans or unskilled laborers of any race at ports in
British Columbia, ostensibly because of depression in the labor
market. The leaders of the Hindu movement, with apparently some German
assistance, determined to test these restrictions. In May, 1914, there
arrived at Vancouver from Shanghai a Japanese ship carrying four
hundred Sikhs from India. A few were admitted, as having been previously
domiciled in Canada; the others, after careful inquiry, were refused
admittance and ordered to be deported. Local police were driven away
from the ship when attempting to enforce the order, and the Government
ordered H.M.C.S. Rainbow to intervene. By a curious irony of history,
the first occasion on which this first Canadian warship was called on to
display force was in expelling from Canada the subjects of another part
of the British Empire. Further trouble followed when the Sikhs reached
Calcutta in September, 1914, for riots took place involving serious loss
of life and later an abortive attempt at rebellion. Fortunately there
were good prospects that the Indian Government would in future accept
the proposal made by Canada in 1909. At the Imperial Conference of 1917,
where representatives of India were present for the first time, it was
agreed to recommend the principle of reciprocity in the treatment of
immigrants, India thus being free to save her pride by imposing on
men from the Dominions the same restrictions the Dominions imposed on
immigrants from India.

But all these dealings with lands across the sea paled into
insignificance beside the task imposed on Canada by the Great War. In
the sudden crisis the Dominion attained a place among the nations which
the slower changes of peace time could scarcely have made possible in
decades.

When the war party in Germany and Austria-Hungary plunged Europe into
the struggle the world had long been fearing, there was not a moment's
hesitation on the part of the people of Canada. It was not merely the
circumstance that technically Canada was at war when Britain was at war
that led Canadians to instant action. The degree of participation, if
not the fact of war, was wholly a matter for the separate Dominions.
It was the deep and abiding sympathy with the mother country whose very
existence was to be at stake. Later, with the unfolding of Germany's
full designs of world dominance and the repeated display of her callous
and ruthless policies, Canada comprehended the magnitude of the danger
threatening all the world and grimly set herself to help end the menace
of militarism once for all.

On August 1, 1914, two days before Belgium was invaded, and three days
before war between Britain and Germany had been declared, the Dominion
Government cabled to London their firm assurance that the people of
Canada would make every sacrifice necessary to secure the integrity and
honor of the Empire and asked for suggestions as to the form aid should
take. The financial and administrative measures the emergency demanded
were carried out by Orders-in-Council in accordance with the scheme
of defense which only a few months before had been drawn up in a "War
Book". Two weeks later, Parliament met in a special four day session and
without a dissenting voice voted the war credits the Government asked
and conferred upon it special war powers of the widest scope. The
country then set about providing men, money, and munitions of war.

The day after war was declared, recruiting was begun for an
expeditionary force of 21,000 men. Half as many more poured into the
camp at Valcartier near Quebec; and by the middle of October this first
Canadian contingent, over 30,000 strong, the largest body of troops
which had ever crossed the Atlantic, was already in England, where
its training was to be completed. As the war went on and all previous
forecasts of its duration and its scale were far outrun, these numbers
were multiplied many times. By the summer of 1917 over 400,000 men had
been enrolled for service, and over 340,000 had already gone overseas,
aside from over 25,000 Allied reservists.

Naturally enough it was the young men of British birth who first
responded in large numbers to the recruiting officer's appeal. A
military background, vivid home memories, the enlistment of kinsmen or
friends overseas, the frequent slightness of local ties, sent them
forth in splendid and steady array. Then the call came home to the
native-born, and particularly to Canadians of English speech. Few of
them had dreamed of war, few had been trained even in militia musters;
but in tens of thousands they volunteered. From French-speaking Canada
the response was slower, in spite of the endeavors of the leaders of the
Opposition as well as of the Government to encourage enlistment. In some
measure this was only to be expected. Quebec was dominantly rural; its
men married young, and the country parishes had little touch with the
outside world. Its people had no racial sympathy with Britain and their
connection with France had long been cut by the cessation of immigration
from that country. Yet this is not the complete explanation of that
aloofness which marked a great part of Quebec. Account must be taken
also of the resentment caused by exaggerated versions of the treatment
accorded the French-Canadian minority in the schools of Ontario and the
West, and especially of the teaching of the Nationalists, led by Henri
Bourassa, who opposed active Canadian participation in the war. Lack of
tact on the part of the Government and reckless taunts from extremists
in Ontario made the breach steadily wider. Yet there were many
encouraging considerations. Another grandson of the leader of '37,
Talbot Papineau, fell fighting bravely, and it was a French-Canadian
battalion, Les Vingt Deuxiemes, which won the honors at Courcelette.

When the war first broke out, no one thought of any but voluntary
methods of enlistment. As the magnitude of the task came home to men
and the example of Great Britain had its influence, voices began to be
raised in favor of compulsion. Sir Robert Borden, the Premier, and Sir
Wilfrid Laurier alike opposed the suggestion. Early in 1917 the adoption
of conscription in the United States, and the need of reenforcements
for the Canadian forces at the front led the Prime Minister, immediately
after his return from the Imperial Conference in London, to bring down
a measure for compulsory service. He urged in behalf of this course
that the need for men was urgent beyond all question; that the voluntary
system, wasteful and unfair at best, had ceased to bring more than six
or seven thousand men a month, chiefly for other than infantry ranks;
and that only by compulsion could Quebec be brought to shoulder her fair
share and the slackers in all the provinces be made to rise to the need.
It was contended, on the other hand, that great as was the need for men,
the need for food, which Canada could best of all countries supply, was
greater still; that voluntary recruiting had yielded over four hundred
thousand men, proportionately equivalent to six million from the United
States, and was slackening only because the reservoir was nearly drained
dry; and that Quebec could be brought into line more effectively by
conciliation than by compulsion.

The issue of conscription brought to an end the political truce which
had been declared in August, 1914. The keener partisans on both
sides had not long been able to abide on the heights of non-political
patriotism which they had occupied in the first generous weeks of the
war. But the public was weary of party cries and called for unity.
Suggestions of a coalition were made at different times, but the party
in power, new to the sweets of office, confident of its capacity,
and backed by a strong majority, gave little heed to the demand. Now,
however, the strong popular opposition offered to the announcement of
conscription led the Prime Minister to propose to Sir Wilfrid Laurier
a coalition Government on a conscription basis. Sir Wilfrid, while
continuing to express his desire to cooperate in any way that would
advance the common cause, declined to enter a coalition to carry out a
programme decided upon without consultation and likely, in his view,
to wreck national unity without securing any compensating increase in
numbers beyond what a vigorous and sympathetic voluntary campaign could
yet obtain.

For months negotiations continued within Parliament and without. The
Military Service Act was passed in August, 1917, with the support of
the majority of the English-speaking members of the Opposition. Then the
Government, which had already secured the passage of an Act providing
for taking the votes of the soldiers overseas, forced through under
closure a measure depriving of the franchise all aliens of enemy birth
or speech who had been admitted to citizenship since 1902, and giving
a vote to every adult woman relative of a soldier on active service.
Victory for the Government now appeared certain. Leading English-peaking
Liberals, particularly from the West, convinced that conscription was
necessary to keep Canada's forces up to the need, or that the War Times
Election Act made opposition hopeless, decided to accept Sir Robert
Borden's offer of seats in a coalition Cabinet.

In the election of December, 1917, in which passion and prejudice were
stirred as never before in the history of Canada, the Unionist forces
won by a sweeping majority. Ontario and the West were almost solidly
behind the Government in the number of members elected, Quebec as
solidly against it, and the Maritime Provinces nearly evenly
divided. The soldiers' vote, contrary to Australian experience, was
overwhelmingly for conscription. The Laurier Liberals polled more
civilian votes in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia, and in
the Dominion as a whole, than the united Liberal party had received in
the Reciprocity election of 1911. The increase in the Unionist popular
vote was still greater, however, and gave the Government fifty-eight
per cent of the popular vote and sixty-five per cent of the seats in the
House. Confidence in the administrative capacity of the new Government,
the belief that it would be more vigorous in carrying on the war, the
desire to make Quebec do its share, the influence of the leaders of
the Western Liberals and of the Grain Growers' Associations, wholesale
promises of exemption to farmers, and the working of the new franchise
law all had their part in the result. Eight months after the Military
Service Act was passed, it had added only twenty thousand men to the
nearly five hundred thousand volunteers; but steps were then taken to
cancel exemptions and to simplify the machinery of administration. Some
eighty thousand men were raised under conscription, but the war, so far
as Canada was concerned, was fought and won by volunteers.

"The self-governing British colonies," wrote Bernhardi before the war,
"have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process
of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any
European theater of war." This contemptuous forecast might have been
justified had German expectations of a short war been fulfilled. Though
large and increasing sums had in recent years been spent on the Canadian
militia and on a small permanent force, the work of building up an
army on the scale the war demanded had virtually to be begun from the
foundation. It was pushed ahead with vigor, under the direction, for the
first three years, of the Minister of Militia, General Sir Sam Hughes.
Many mistakes were made. Complaints of waste in supply departments
and of slackness of discipline among the troops were rife in the early
months. But the work went on; and when the testing time came, Canada's
civilian soldiers held their own with any veterans on either side the
long line of trenches.

It was in April, 1915, at the second battle of Ypres--or, as it is more
often termed in Canada, St. Julien or Langemarck--that the quality of
the men of the first contingent was blazoned forth. The Germans had
launched a determined attack on the junction of the French and Canadian
forces, seeking to drive through to Calais. The use, for the first time,
of asphyxiating gases drove back in confusion the French colonial troops
on the left of the Canadians. Attacked and outflanked by a German army
of 150,000 men, four Canadian brigades, immensely inferior in heavy
artillery and tortured by the poisonous fumes, filled the gap, hanging
on doggedly day and night until reenforcements came and Calais was
saved. In sober retrospection it was almost incredible that the thin
khaki line had held against the overwhelming odds which faced it. A few
weeks later, at Givenchy and Festubert, in the same bloody salient of
Ypres, the Canadian division displayed equal courage with hardly equal
success. In the spring of 1916, when the Canadian forces grew first to
three and then to four divisions, heavy toll was taken at St. Eloi and
Sanctuary Wood.

When they were shifted from the Ypres sector to the Somme, the dashing
success at Courcelette showed them as efficient in offense as in
defense. In 1917 a Canadian general, Sir Arthur Currie, three years
before only a business man of Vancouver, took command of the Canadian
troops. The capture of Vimy Ridge, key to the whole Arras position,
after months of careful preparation, the hard-fought struggle for Lens,
and toward the close of the year the winning of the Passchendaele Ridge,
at heavy cost, were instances of the increasing scale and importance of
the operations entrusted to Currie's men.

In the closing year of the war the Canadian corps played a still more
distinctive and essential part. During the early months of 1918, when
the Germans were making their desperate thrusts for Paris and the
Channel, the Canadians held little of the line that was attacked.
Their divisions had been withdrawn in turn for special training in open
warfare movements, in close cooperation with tanks and air forces. When
the time came to launch the Allied offensive, they were ready. It
was Canadian troops who broke the hitherto unbreakable Wotan line, or
Drocourt-Queant switch; it was Canadians who served as the spearhead in
the decisive thrust against Cambrai; and it was Canadians who captured
Mons, the last German stronghold taken before the armistice was
signed, and thus ended the war at the very spot where the British "Old
Contemptibles" had begun their dogged fight four years before.

Through all the years of war the Canadian forces never lost a gun nor
retired from a position they had consolidated. Canadians were the first
to practice trench raiding; and Canadian cadets thronged that branch of
the service, the Royal Flying Corps, where steady nerves and individual
initiative were at a premium. In countless actions they proved their
fitness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best that Britain and
France and the United States could send: they asked no more than that.
The casualty list of 220,000 men, of whom 60,000 sleep forever in the
fields of France and Flanders and in the plains of England, witnesses
the price this people of eight millions paid as its share in the task of
freeing the world from tyranny.

The realization that in a world war not merely the men in the trenches
but the whole nation could and must be counted as part of the fighting
force was slow in coming in Canada as in other democratic and unwarlike
lands. Slowly the industry of the country was adjusted to a war basis.
When the conflict broke out, the country was pulling itself together
after the sudden collapse of the speculative boom of the preceding
decade. For a time men were content to hold their organization together
and to avert the slackening of trade and the spread of unemployment
which they feared. Then, as the industrial needs and opportunities of
the war became clear, they rallied. Field and factory vied in expansion,
and the Canadian contribution of food and munitions provided a very
substantial share of the Allies' needs. Exports increased threefold, and
the total trade was more than doubled as compared with the largest year
before the war.

The financing of the war and of the industrial expansion which
accompanied it was a heavy task. For years Canada had looked to Great
Britain for a large share alike of public and of private borrowings. Now
it became necessary not merely to find at home all the capital required
for ordinary development but to meet the burden of war expenditure,
and later to advance to Great Britain the funds she required for
her purchase of supplies in Canada. The task was made easier by the
effective working of a banking system which had many times proved its
soundness and its flexibility. When the money market of Britain was
no longer open to overseas borrowers, the Dominion first turned to the
United States, where several federal and provincial loans were floated,
and later to her own resources. Domestic loans were issued on an
increasing scale and with increasing success, and the Victory Loan of
1918 enrolled one out of every eight Canadians among its subscribers.
Taxation reached an adequate basis more slowly. Inertia and the
influence of business interests led the Government to cling for the
first two years to customs and excise duties as its main reliance.
Then excess profits and income taxes of steadily increasing weight were
imposed, and the burdens were distributed more fairly. The Dominion was
able not only to meet the whole expenditure of its armed forces but to
reverse the relations which existed before the war and to become, as
far as current liabilities went, a creditor rather than a debtor of the
United Kingdom.

It was not merely the financial relations of Canada with the United
Kingdom which required readjustment. The service and the sacrifices
which the Dominions had made in the common cause rendered it imperative
that the political relations between the different parts of the Empire
should be put on a more definite and equal basis. The feeling was
widespread that the last remnants of the old colonial subordination must
be removed and that the control exercised by the Dominions should be
extended over the whole field of foreign affairs.

The Imperial Conference met in London in the spring of 1917. At special
War Cabinet meetings the representatives of the Dominions discussed war
plans and peace terms with the leaders of Britain. It was decided to
hold a Conference immediately after the end of the war to discuss the
future constitutional organization of the Empire. Premier Borden and
General Smuts both came out strongly against the projects of imperial
parliamentary federation which aggressive organizations in Britain
and in some of the Dominions had been urging. The Conference of 1917
recorded its view that any coming readjustment must be based on a
full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an imperial
commonwealth; that it should recognize the right of the Dominions and of
India to an adequate voice in foreign policy; and that it should provide
effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important
matters of common concern and for such concerted action as the several
Governments should determine. The policy of alliance, of cooperation
between the Governments of the equal and independent states of the
Empire, searchingly tested and amply justified by the war, had compelled
assent.

The coming of peace gave occasion for a wider and more formal
recognition of the new international status of the Dominions. It had
first been proposed that the British Empire should appear as a unit,
with the representatives of the Dominions present merely in an advisory
capacity or participating in turn as members of the British delegation.
The Dominion statesmen assembled in London and Paris declined to
assent to this proposal, and insisted upon representation in the Peace
Conference and in the League of Nations in their own right. The British
Government, after some debate, acceded, and, with more difficulty,
the consent of the leading Allies was won. The representatives of the
Dominions signed the treaty with Germany on behalf of their respective
countries, and each Dominion, with India, was made a member of the
League. At the same time only the British Empire, and not any of the
Dominions, was given a place in the real organ of power, the Executive
Council of the League, and in many respects the exact relationship
between the United Kingdom and the other parts of the Empire in
international affairs was left ambiguous, for later events and counsel
to determine. Many French and American observers who had not kept in
close touch with the growth of national consciousness within the British
Empire were apprehensive lest this plan should prove a deep-laid scheme
for multiplying British influence in the Conference and the League.
Some misunderstanding was natural in view not only of the unprecedented
character of the Empire's development and polity, but of the incomplete
and ambiguous nature of the compromise affected at Paris between the
nationalist and the imperialist tendencies within the Empire. Yet the
reluctance of the British imperialists of the straiter sect to accede
to the new arrangement, and the independence of action of the Dominion
representatives at the Conference, as in the stand of Premier Hughes of
Australia on the Japanese demand for recognition of racial equality and
in the statement of protest by General Smuts of South Africa on signing
the treaty, made it clear that the Dominions would not be merely echoes.
Borden and Botha and Smuts, though new to the ways of diplomacy, proved
that in clear understanding of the broader issues and in moderation of
policy and temper they could bear comparison with any of the leaders of
the older nations.

The war also brought changes in the relations between Canada and her
great neighbor. For a time there was danger that it would erect a
barrier of differing ideals and contrary experience. When month after
month went by with the United States still clinging to its policy
of neutrality, while long lists of wounded and dead and missing were
filling Canadian newspapers, a quiet but deep resentment, not without
a touch of conscious superiority, developed in many quarters in the
Dominion. Yet there were others who realized how difficult and how
necessary it was for the United States to attain complete unity of
purpose before entering the war, and how different its position was
from that of Canada, where the political tie with Britain had brought
immediate action more instinctive than reasoned. It was remembered, too,
that in the first 360,000 Canadians who went overseas, there were 12,000
men of American birth, including both residents in Canada and men who
had crossed the border to enlist. When the patience of the United States
was at last exhausted and it took its place in the ranks of the nations
fighting for freedom, the joy of Canadians was unbounded. The entrance
of the United States into the war assured not only the triumph of
democracy in Europe but the continuance and extension of frank and
friendly relations between the democracies of North America. As the war
went on and Canada and the United States were led more and more to pool
their united resources, to cooperate in finance and in the supply
of coal, iron, steel, wheat, and other war essentials, countless new
strands were woven into the bond that held the two countries together.
Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in the utterances of
the head of the Republic the highest aspirations of Canadians for the
future ordering of the world found incomparable expression.

Canada had done what she could to assure the triumph of right in the
war. Not less did she believe that she had a contribution to make
toward that new ordering of the world after the war which alone could
compensate her for the blood and treasure she had spent. It would be her
mission to bind together in friendship and common aspirations the two
larger English-speaking states, with one of which she was linked by
history and with the other by geography. To the world in general
Canada had to offer that achievement of difference in unity, that
reconciliation of liberty with peace and order, which the British Empire
was struggling to attain along paths in which the Dominion had been
the chief pioneer. "In the British Commonwealth of Nations," declared
General Smuts, "this transition from the old legalistic idea of
political sovereignty based on force to the new social idea of
constitutional freedom based on consent, has been gradually evolving for
more than a century. And the elements of the future world government,
which will no longer rest on the imperial ideas adopted from the Roman
law, are already in operation in our Commonwealth of Nations and will
rapidly develop in the near future." This may seem an idealistic aim;
yet, as Canada's Prime Minister asked a New York audience in 1916, "What
great and enduring achievement has the world ever accomplished that was
not based on idealism?"

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

For the whole period since 1760 the most comprehensive and thorough work
is "Canada and its Provinces", edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, 23
vols. (1914). W. Kingsford's "History of Canada", 10 vols. (1887-1898),
is badly written but is an ample storehouse of material. The "Chronicles
of Canada" series (1914-1916) covers the whole field in a number of
popular volumes, of which several are listed below. F. X. Garneau's
"Histoire du Canada" (1845-1848; new edition, edited by Hector Garneau,
1913-), the classical French-Canadian record of the development of
Canada down to 1840, is able and moderate in tone, though considered by
some critics not sufficiently appreciative of the Church.

Of brief surveys of Canada's history the best are W. L. Grant's "History
of Canada" (1914) and H. E. Egerton's "Canada" (1908).

The primary sources are abundant. The Dominion Archives have made a
remarkable collection of original official and private papers and of
transcripts of documents from London and Paris. See D. W. Parker, "A
Guide to the Documents in the Manuscript Room at the Public Archives of
Canada" (1914). Many of these documents are calendared in the "Report on
Canadian Archives" (1882 to date), and complete reprints, systematically
arranged and competently annotated, are being issued by the Archives
Branch, of which A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, "Documents Relating to the
Constitutional History of Canada", 1759-1791, and Doughty and McArthur,
"Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada", 1791-1818,
have already appeared. A useful collection of speeches and dispatches
is found in H. E. Egerton and W. L. Grant, "Canadian Constitutional
Development" (1907), and W. P. M. Kennedy has edited a somewhat larger
collection, "Documents of the Canadian Constitution", 1759-1915 (1918).
The later Sessional Papers and Hansards or Parliamentary Debates are
easily accessible. Files of the older newspapers, such as the Halifax
"Chronicle" (1820 to date, with changes of title), Montreal "Gazette"
(1778 to date), Toronto "Globe" (1844 to date), "Manitoba Free Press"
(1879 to date), Victoria "Colonist" (1858 to date), are invaluable.
"The Dominion Annual Register and Review", ed. by H. J. Morgan, 8 vols.
(1879-1887) and "The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs", by John
Castell Hopkins (1901 to date), are useful for the periods covered.

For the first chapter, Sir Charles P. Lucas, "A History of Canada",
1765-1812 (1909) and A. G. Bradley, "The Making of Canada" (1908) are
the best single volumes. William Wood, "The Father of British Canada"
("Chronicles of Canada", 1916), records Carleton's defense of Canada
in the Revolutionary War; and Justin H. Smith's "Our Struggle for the
Fourteenth Colony" (1907) is a scholarly and detailed account of the
same period from an American standpoint. Victor Con's "The Province of
Quebec and the Early American Revolution" (1896), with a review of the
same by Adam Shortt in the "Review of Historical Publications Relating
to Canada", vol. 1 (University of Toronto, 1897), and C. W. Alvord's
"The Mississippi Valley in British Politics", 2 vols. (1917) should
be consulted for an interpretation of the Quebec Act. For the general
reader, W. S. Wallace's "The United Empire Loyalists" ("Chronicles of
Canada", 1914) supersedes the earlier Canadian compilations; C. H.
Van Tyne's "The Loyalists in the American Revolution" (1902) and A. C.
Flick's "Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution" (1901)
embody careful researches by two American scholars. The War of 1812 is
most competently treated by William Wood in "The War with the United
States" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915); the naval aspects are sketched
in Theodore Roosevelt's "The Naval War of 1812" (1882) and analyzed
scientifically in A. T. Mahan's "Sea Power in its Relations to the War
of 1812" (1905).

For the period, 1815-1841, W. S. Wallace's "The Family Compact"
("Chronicles of Canada", 1915) and A. D. De Celles's "The Patriotes of
'37" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) are the most concise summaries. J.
C. Dent's "The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion" (1885) is biased
but careful and readable. "William Lyon Mackenzie", by Charles Lindsey,
revised by G. G. S. Lindsey (1908), is a sober defense of Mackenzie by
his son-in-law and grandson. Robert Christie's "A History of the
Late Province of Lower Canada", 6 vols. (1848-1866) preserves much
contemporary material. There are few secondary books taking the
anti-popular side: T. C. Haliburton's "The Bubbles of Canada" (1839)
records Sam Slick's opposition to reform; C. W. Robinson's "Life of
Sir John Beverley Robinson" (1904) is a lifeless record of the greatest
Compact leader. Lord Durham's "Report on the Affairs of British North
America" (1839; available in Methuen reprint, 1902, or with introduction
and notes by Sir Charles Lucas, 3 vols., 1912) is indispensable. For the
Union period there are several political biographies available. G. M.
Wrong's "The Earl of Elgin" (1905), John Lewis's "George Brown" (1906),
W. L. Grant's "The Tribune of Nova Scotia" ("Chronicles of Canada",
1915), J. Pope's "Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander
Macdonald", 2 vols. (1894), J. Boyd's "Sir George Etienne Cartier"
(1914), and O. D. Skelton's "Life and Times of Sir A. T. Galt"
(1919), cover the political developments from various angles. A. H.
U. Colquhoun's "The Fathers of Confederation" ("Chronicles of
Canada", 1916) is a clear and impartial account of the achievement of
Confederation; while M. O. Hammond's "Canadian Confederation and its
Leaders" (1917) records the service of each of its chief architects.

For the years since Confederation biographies again give the most
accessible record. Sir John S. Willison's "Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the
Liberal Party" (1903) is the best political biography yet written in
Canada. Sir Richard Cartwright's Reminiscences (1912) reflects that
statesman's individual and pungent views of affairs, while Sir Charles
Tupper's "Recollections of Sixty Years" (1914) and John Castell
Hopkins's "Life and Work of Sir John Thompson" (1895) give a
Conservative version of the period. Sir Joseph Pope's "The Day of Sir
John Macdonald" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915), and O. D. Skelton's "The
Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) between them
cover the whole period briefly. L. J. Burpee's "Sandford Fleming" (1915)
is one of the few biographies dealing with industrial as distinct from
political leaders. Imperial relations may be studied in G. R. Parkin's
"Imperial Federation, the Problem of National Unity" (1892) and in
L. Curtis's "The Problem of the Commonwealth" (1916), which advocate
imperial federation, and in R. Jebb's "The Britannic Question; a Survey
of Alternatives" (1913), J. S. Ewart's "The Kingdom Papers" (1912-), and
A. B. Keith's "Imperial Unity and the Dominions" (1916), which criticize
that solution from different standpoints. The "Reports" of the Imperial
Conferences of 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, are of much
value. Relations with the United States are discussed judiciously in W.
A. Dunning's "The British Empire and the United States" (1914). Phases
of Canada's recent development other than political are covered best
in the volumes of "Canada and its Provinces", a History of the Canadian
people and their institutions, edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty.

A useful guide to recent books dealing with Canadian history will be
found in the annual "Review of Historical Publications Relating to
Canada", published by the University of Toronto (1896 to date).

End of Project Gutenberg's The Canadian Dominion, by Oscar D. Skelton