TWO GOVERNORS-GENERAL--LORD MINTO AND LORD GREY
Lord Minto has now passed from the great post of Governor-General of
the Dominion to the still greater Viceroyalty of India. But I
apprehend it will be long before his reign in Canada is forgotten.
Possibly the Canadians might not use, and may not like, the word
reign. They are a susceptible as well as a great people. They are
jealous of their liberties, which are in no danger, and of the word
American, to which they have some claim, over-shadowed though it be
by their greater neighbour on the South. I have seen more instances
than one of Canadian sensitiveness, of which I will take the
simplest. Having to pay for a purchase in an Ottawa shop I asked the
shopkeeper whether he would take an American banknote. He answered
with a flushed face:
"We consider our money as much American as yours. We have the same
right as you to the name American."
"By all means. But what do you call our money?"
"United States bills."
"And what do you call me?"
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But to that simple question he had no answer ready. And I rather
imagine the time has come, or is coming, when the Canadian may be as
proud of the name which identifies him with the northern half of the
continent as we are of the adjective we have to share, more or less,
with others. I never heard of a Mexican calling himself an American,
but I believe the Latin races to the South do; and forget sometimes
to put South before it. Lord Minto was Governor-General while Mr.
Chamberlain was Colonial Secretary, a period of transition, of
Imperial transition, to which Mr. Chamberlain led the way. Nobody
has ever forgotten his adjuration to all Englishmen to think
imperially. As I remember Canada during several visits, she was at
that time more inclined to think independently. Not that any party
in the Dominion meditated a secession from the Empire, but there was
a pretty distinct notion, and claim, of colonial autonomy. Canada
came first, as Canada, and not as a part of the Empire. The moment
when Imperial considerations first became dominant in the Canadian
mind was moment of the Boer War.
There it is that Lord Minto's name becomes indissolubly allied with
the Dominion. His share in that great transaction of the Canadian
contingent to South Africa has never, I think, been fully understood
by the British public. Nor would it ever be if the matter were left
to him. He was never a man to advertise himself or his deeds. I
dare say he will not like my telling the story, {286} though I shall
tell it only as it was told to me, and the teller had nothing to do
with Government House.
It was for a while doubtful whether Canada would send troops. There
was, I am told, an uncertain feeling about the militia organization,
then on a different footing from the present. There were awkward
stories of corruption and inefficiency. It was doubted whether a
force officered and equipped in conditions then existing would do
credit to the Dominion. There were hesitations on other grounds.
But when finally a levy was voted, Lord Minto, who had taken no part
in the discussion and could take none, availed himself of his
authority as Governor-General and of his experience as a soldier, and
gave his personal attention to the organization of the contingent.
It was stated to me much more strongly than that, and my informant
seemed to doubt whether Lord Minto did not exceed, or at least
strain, his prerogatives as representative of the Crown. If he did,
so much the better. The English have ever liked a servant in high
place who was not afraid of responsibilities. But for my purpose it
is enough to say that Lord Minto took an active part in these
momentous preparations. I think no officer was appointed without his
sanction, no contract for supplies entered into which he did not
approve, no arrangement of any kind made but upon his initiative or
with his express consent.
The result was that the Canadian forces reached Africa a body of
soldiers fit for the field, {287} not as a mere aggregation of men
food for powder. England knows, and all the world knows, what
service they did. There were no better troops of the kind, perhaps
not many of any kind better adapted for the work they had to do and
for coping with such an enemy as the Boers. They did more than their
contract called for in the field. They builded better than they
knew. They made it plain to all men that the country which had sent
such troops as these many thousands of miles beyond the seas to the
relief of the Imperial forces of Great Britain was itself an integral
and indispensable part of the Empire.
Whereas, if they had failed or only half succeeded, they would have
done little good to the British arms in South Africa and none at all
to the Imperialism of which Canada to-day is a bulwark. And if this
is a true account, as I believe it to be, of the way in which these
two great results were brought about, the credit of them belongs more
to Lord Minto than to any other man.
I do not offer this as an explanation of the regard in which Lord
Minto was held. It could not be an explanation, because it was not
generally known. There were other reasons, at the top of which I
should put his common sense, his sincerity, and, of course, that
devotion to duty which every Governor-General is presumed to possess,
which in him was conspicuous. Everybody liked him, nobody doubted
him. He made the interests of Canada his own. He traversed that
vast territory from end to end again and again. He held a {288}
Court not in Ottawa only, but in Quebec, in Halifax, in Toronto, and
in that Far North where Canada touches Alaska and the chief harvest
of the soil is gold. His five years' term came to an end but the
Colonial Office and Parliament House and the people of Canada wished
him to stay on, and so the five years became six. A period on which
to look back with pride.
Canada is again fortunate in her Governor-General, and in his
relations with those who mould public opinion on the American side of
the border. I imagine it may not be known in England how he first
conquered the respect and good-will of the Americans. It was at a
dinner of some five hundred or six hundred people at the Waldorf
Hotel in New York. In the course of his short speech Lord Grey
referred, with a plainness unusual in those exalted regions, to what
had been said in times past about the possible absorption of Canada
by the United States.
"But now," observed the Governor-General, "there is no more reason
for discussing the annexation of Canada by the United States than for
discussing the annexation of the United States by Canada."
It was a straight hit from the shoulder, but the audience rose to it
and cheered him as I had heard no Englishman cheered in New York
before that time. He became in a moment a great figure, filling the
public eye. He delivered his tremendous sentence with simplicity and
good humour. There was nothing like defiance or menace. {289}
Everybody saw that he felt himself on a level with his hearers. He
spoke as Governor-General of the Dominion to the people of the United
States, _d'égal à égal_. He spoke as an Englishman to Americans.
Mr. Price Collier may say, if he chooses, that English and Americans
do not like each other, but I will ask him what other two
nationalities have the same, or anything like the same, points of
contact and of sympathy? There stood Lord Grey, just an Englishman,
holding out his hand to his American cousins. If the hand happened
for that moment to be clenched it was none the less a greeting, and
was understood as such. You could not look into his face without
seeing in it the spirit of kinship and of friendship. Lord Grey is
pre-eminently one of those men who think the best relations between
men or between communities must spring from frankness. He wanted to
clear the ground, and he did clear it. If he had asked anybody's
advice he would certainly have been advised not to say what he did.
He preferred to trust to his own instincts, and they proved to be
true instincts. The danger was that a freedom of speech which would
be accepted from his lips might be resented when read in cold print.
But it was not.
No American will have forgotten Lord Grey's gift of his portrait of
Franklin to Philadelphia. That endeared him to us still further. It
was a prize of war which he surrendered, taken in the War of the
Revolution by General Sir Charles Grey. It used to hang near the
ceiling in one of {290} the reception rooms of Howick House,
Northumberland. I saw it there some time before the gift and Lord
Grey told me its history, but did not tell me he meant to give it
back to America. I believe he did ask whether I thought Philadelphia
would care to have it again, a question to which I could not but say
yes. Yet it might almost be thought of the family, with a good deal
more than a hundred years of possession behind it. But in this
country a hundred years do not count so much as elsewhere. The
English have long since got into the habit of reckoning by centuries.
When Lord Grey went to Washington the President asked me to bring him
to the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt had a reception that evening and
I said with her permission I would bring him then. "Very good," said
the President, "and mind you bring him to me as soon as you come." I
did as I was told. The President greeted him, as he did everybody,
warmly, but in a way that made Lord Grey understand he was welcome.
Within thirty seconds they were deep in political economy, a matter
of which Lord Grey had made a profounder study than the President.
For the Englishman had not, like Bacon and Mr. Roosevelt, taken all
knowledge to be his province, and was able to master his subjects.
More than once I had occasion to see something of his familiarity
with difficult subjects--once at dinner when the late Mr. Beit, the
South African magnate, sat on his right, and the two discussed
financial and political questions. Mr. Beit had made a great {291}
fortune in South Africa, and Lord Grey had not. The Chartered
Company had not then proved a mine of wealth to its administrator.
But the minds of the two were at one. The knowledge of each was
immense. The power of grappling with great subjects was common to
both. Perhaps Lord Grey sometimes took an imaginative view, but the
feet of the capitalist were planted on the solid earth.
The President and the Governor-General became friends at once,
neither of the two being the kind of man to whom friendship requires
length of years to come into being. It is, of course, for the
interests of both Canada and the United States that relations of
sympathetic good-will should exist between the rulers of each. A few
hours before their meeting the President knew nothing about Lord
Grey. Even to Mr. Roosevelt's omniscience there are limits. But he
desired to know, and when he had heard a little of Lord Grey's
history, said joyfully: "All right; we have subjects in common and
ideas too." So the doors of the White House opened wide to the
Governor-General, and Lord Grey was the President's guest, and the
impression in Canada was a good impression.
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