In one of the long stillwaters of the mighty stream that rushes
from _Lac Saint Jean_ to make the Saguenay--below the _Ile
Maligne_ and above the cataract of Chicoutimi--two birch-bark
canoes are floating quietly, descending with rhythmic strokes of
the paddle, through the luminous northern twilight.
The chief guide, Jean Morel, is a _coureur de bois_ of the old
type--broad-shouldered, red-bearded, a fearless canoeman, a good
hunter and fisherman--simple of speech and deep of heart: a good
man to trust in the rapids.
“Tell me, Jean,” I ask in the comfortable leisure of our voyage
which conduces to pipe-smoking and conversation, “tell me, are you
a Frenchman or an Englishman?”
“Not the one, nor the other,” answers Jean in his old-fashioned
_patois._ “M'sieu' knows I am French-Canadian.”
A remarkable answer, when you come to think of it; for it claims
a nationality which has never existed, and is not likely to exist,
except in a dream.
“Well, then,” I say, following my impulse of psychological curiosity,
of which Jean is sublimely ignorant, “suppose a war should come
between France and England. On which side would you fight?”
Jean knocks the dottle out of his pipe, refills and relights. Then,
between the even strokes of his paddle, he makes this extraordinary
reply:
_“M'sieu, I suppose my body would march under the flag of England.
But my heart would march under the flag of France.”_
Good old Jean Morel! You had no premonition of this glorious war
in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together
against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and
Stripes would join them.
How should you know anything about it? Your log cabin was your
capitol. Your little family was your council of state. Even the
rest of us, proud of our university culture, were too blind, in
those late Victorian days, to see the looming menace of Prussian
paganism and the conquer-lust of the Hohenzollerns, which has
plunged the whole world in war.