CHAPTER V. THE YEARS OF FULFILMENT

Wilfrid Laurier was summoned to form his first Cabinet in July, 1896.

For eighteen years previous to that time the Liberals had sat in what

one of their number used to call "the cold shades of Opposition." For

half of that term Laurier had been leader of the party, confined to

the negative task of watching and criticizing the administration of his

great predecessor and of the four premiers who followed in almost as

many years. Now he was called to constructive tasks. Fortune favored him

by bringing him to power at the very turn of the tide; but he justified

fortune's favor by so steering the ship of state as to take full

advantage of wind and current. Through four Parliaments, through fifteen

years of office, through the time of fruition of so many long-deferred

hopes, he was to guide the destinies of the nation.

Laurier began his work by calling to his Cabinet not merely the party

leaders in the federal arena but four of the outstanding provincial

Liberals--Oliver Mowat, Premier of Ontario, William S. Fielding, Premier

of Nova Scotia, Andrew G. Blair, Premier of New Brunswick, and, a

few months later, Clifford Sifton of Manitoba. The Ministry was the

strongest in individual capacity that the Dominion had yet possessed.

The prestige of the provincial leaders, all men of long experience and

tested shrewdness, strengthened the Administration in quarters where

it otherwise would have been weak, for there had been many who doubted

whether the untried Liberal party could provide capable administrators.

There had also been many who doubted the expediency of making Prime

Minister a French-Canadian Catholic. Such doubters were reassured by

the presence of Mowat and Fielding, until the Prime Minister himself

had proved the wisdom of the choice. There were others who admitted

Laurier's personal charm and grace but doubted whether he had the

political strength to control a party of conflicting elements and

to govern a country where different race and diverging religious and

sectional interests set men at odds. Here again time proved such fears

to be groundless. Long before Laurier's long term of office had ended,

any distrust was transformed into the charge of his opponents that he

played the dictator. His courtly manners were found not to hide weakness

but to cover strength.

The first task of the new Government was to settle the Manitoba school

question. Negotiations which were at once begun with the provincial

Government were doubtless made easier by the fact that the same party

was in power at Ottawa and at Winnipeg, but it was not this fact alone

which brought agreement. The Laurier Government, unlike its predecessor,

did not insist on the restoration of separate schools. It accepted a

compromise which retained the single system of public schools, but which

provided religious teaching in the last half hour of school and, where

numbers warranted, a teacher of the same faith as the pupils. The

compromise was violently denounced by the Roman Catholic hierarchy

but, except in two cities, where parochial schools were set up, it was

accepted by the laity.

With this thorny question out of the way, the Government turned to

what it recognized as its greatest task, the promotion of the country's

material prosperity. For years industry had been at a standstill.

Exports and imports had ceased to expand; railway building had halted;

emigrants outnumbered immigrants. The West, the center of so many

hopes, the object of so many sacrifices, had not proved the El Dorado so

eagerly sought by fortune hunters and home builders. There were little

over two hundred thousand white men west of the Great Lakes. Homesteads

had been offered freely; but in 1896 only eighteen hundred were taken

up, and less than a third of these by Canadians from the East. The stock

of the Canadian Pacific was selling at fifty. All but a few had begun to

lose faith in the promise of the West.

Then suddenly a change came. The failure of the West to lure pioneers

was not due to poverty of soil or lack of natural riches: its resources

were greater than the most reckless orator had dreamed. It was merely

that its time had not come and that the men in charge of the country's

affairs had not thrown enough energy into the task of speeding the

coming of that time. Now fortune worked with Canada, not against it. The

long and steady fall of prices, and particularly of the prices of farm

products, ended; and a rapid rise began to make farming pay once more.

The good free lands of the United States had nearly all been taken up.

Canada's West was now the last great reserve of free and fertile land.

Improvements in farming methods made it possible to cope with the

peculiar problems of prairie husbandry. British capital, moreover, no

longer found so ready an outlet in the United States, which was now

financing its own development; and it had suffered severe losses in

Argentine smashes and Australian droughts. Capital, therefore, was free

to turn to Canada.

But it was not enough merely to have the resources; it was essential to

display them and to disclose their value. Canada needed millions of

men of the right stock, and fortunately there were millions who needed

Canada. The work of the Government was to put the facts before these

potential settlers. The new Minister of the Interior, Clifford Sifton,

himself a western man, at once began an immigration campaign which has

never been equaled in any country for vigor and practical efficiency.

Canada had hitherto received few settlers direct from the Continent.

Western Europe was now prosperous, and emigrants were few. But eastern

Europe was in a ferment, and thousands were ready to swarm to new homes

overseas.

The activities of a subsidized immigration agency, the North Atlantic

Trading Company, brought great numbers of these peoples. Foremost in

numbers were the Ruthenians from Galicia. Most distinctive were the

Doukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of

whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English

Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military

service. The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when

it took the form of midwinter pilgrimages in nature's garb, and the

clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise

to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians

the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern or southern Europe.

Ruthenians and Poles, however, continued to come down to the eve of the

Great War, and nearly all settled on western lands. Jewish Poland sent

its thousands who settled in the larger cities, until Montreal had

more Jews than Jerusalem and its Protestant schools held their Easter

holidays in Passover. Italian navvies came also by the thousands, but

mainly as birds of passage; and Greeks and men from the Balkan States

were limited in numbers. Of the three million immigrants who came to

Canada from the beginning of the century to the outbreak of the war,

some eight hundred thousand came from continental Europe, and of

these the Ruthenians, Jews, Italians, and Scandinavians were the most

numerous.

It was in the United States that Canada made the greatest efforts

to obtain settlers and that she achieved the most striking success.

Beginning in 1897 advertisements were placed in five or six thousand

American farm and weekly newspapers. Booklets were distributed by the

million. Hundreds of farmer delegates were given free trips through

the promised land. Agents were appointed in each likely State, with

sub-agents who were paid a bonus on every actual settler. The first

settlers sent back word of limitless land to be had for a song, and of

No. 1 Northern Wheat that ran thirty or forty bushels to the acre. Soon

immigration from the States began; the trickle became a trek; the trek,

a stampede. In 1896 the immigrants from the United States to Canada had

been so few as not to be recorded; in 1897 there were 2000; in 1899,

12,000; in the fiscal year 1902-03, 50,000; and in 1912-13, 139,000.

The new immigrants proved to be the best of settlers; nearly all were

progressive farmers experienced in western methods and possessed of

capital. The countermovement from Canada to the United States never

wholly ceased, but it slackened and was much more than offset by this

northward rush. Nothing so helped to confirm Canadian confidence in

their own land and to make the outside world share this high estimate as

this unimpeachable evidence from over a million American newcomers who

found in Canada, between 1897 and 1914, greater opportunities than even

the United States could offer. The Ministry then carried its propaganda

to Great Britain. Newspapers, schools, exhibitions were used in ways

which startled the stolid Englishman into attention. Circumstances

played into the hands of the propagandists, who took advantage of the

flow of United States settlers into the West, the Klondike gold fields

rush, the presence of Laurier at the Jubilee festivities at London in

1897, Canada's share in the Boer War. British immigrants rose to 50,000

in 1903-04, to 120,000 in 1907-08, and to 150,000 in 1912-13. From 1897

to the outbreak of the war over 1,100,000 Britishers came to Canada.

Three out of four were English, the rest mainly Scotch; the Irish, who

once had come in tens of thousands and whose descendants still formed

the largest element in the English-speaking peoples of Canada, now

sent only one man for every twelve from England. The gates of Canadian

immigration, however, were not thrown open to all comers. The criminal,

the insane and feeble-minded, the diseased, and others likely to

become public charges, were barred altogether or allowed to remain

provisionally, subject to deportation within three years. Immigrants

sent out by British charitable societies were subjected, after 1908,

to rigid inspection before leaving England. No immigrant was admitted

without sufficient money in his purse to tide over the first few weeks,

unless he were going to farm work or responsible relatives. Asiatics

were restricted by special regulations. Steadily the bars were raised

higher.

Not all the 3,000,000 who came to Canada between 1897 and 1914 remained.

Many drifted across the border; many returned to their old homes, their

dreams fulfilled or shattered; yet the vast majority remained. Never

had any country so great a task of assimilation as faced Canada,

with 3,000,000 pouring into a country of 5,000,000 in a dozen years.

Fortunately the great bulk of the newcomers were of the old stocks.

Closely linked with immigration in promoting the prosperity of

the country were the land policy and the railway policy of the

Administration. The system of granting free homesteads to settlers

was continued on an even more generous scale. The 1800 entries for

homesteads in 1896 had become 40,000 ten years later. In 1906 land equal

in area to Massachusetts and Delaware was given away; in 1908 a Wales,

in 1909 five Prince Edward Islands, and in 1910 and 1911 a Belgium, a

Netherlands, and two Montenegros passed from the state to the settler.

Unfortunately not every homesteader became an active farmer, and

production, though mounting fast, could not keep pace with speculation.

Railway building had almost ceased after the completion of the Canadian

Pacific system. Now it revived on a greater scale than ever before. In

the twenty years after 1896 the miles in operation grew from 16,000 to

nearly 40,000. Two new transcontinentals were added, and the older roads

took on a new lease of life. At the end of this period of expansion,

only the United States, Germany, and Russia had railroad mileage

exceeding that of Canada. Much of the building was premature or

duplicated other roads. The scramble for state aid, federal and

provincial, had demoralized Canadian politics. A large part of the notes

the country rashly backed, by the policy of guaranteeing bond issues,

were in time presented for payment. Yet the railway policies of the

period were broadly justified. New country was opened to settlers;

outlets to the sea were provided; capital was obtained in the years when

it was still abundant and cheap; the whole industry of the country

was stimulated; East was bound closer to West and depth was added to

length.*

* During the Great War it became necessary for the Federal

Government to take over both the National Transcontinental,

running from Moncton in New Brunswick to Winnipeg, and the

Canadian Northern, running from ocean to ocean, and to

incorporate both, along with the Intercolonial, in the

Canadian National Railways, a system fourteen thousand miles

in length.

The opening of the West brought new prosperity to every corner of the

East. Factories found growing markets; banks multiplied branches and

business; exports mounted fast and imports faster; closer relations

were formed with London and New York financial interests; mushroom

millionaires, country clubs, city slums, suburban subdivisions,

land booms, grafting aldermen, and all the apparatus of an advanced

civilization grew apace. A new self-confidence became the dominant note

alike of private business and of public policy.

With industrial prosperity, political unity became assured. Canada

became more and more a name of which all her sons were proud. Expansion

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