(1907)
It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross
between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last
couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but
at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes
iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as
one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness,
general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has
combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the
game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of
the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only
known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!'
Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were
always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said
first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage
to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the
British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions.
Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it,
that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the
population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for
the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and
sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these
grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy
the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present
mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of
their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in
office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the
presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books,
and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into
those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of
exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the
forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief
at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and
slackness increase.
On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit
in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu
called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' These last are after satisfying the
two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in
scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free--shall we
say--love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without
giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy
enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a
rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every
steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly
to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing.
Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of
the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the
Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form
than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well
marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from
Italy--less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has,
too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation,
but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with
arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the
parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land
called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders
who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are
drifting up to British Columbia already.
Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost,
drought, and fire--and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward
nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one
can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian
or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child
understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand
(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa
gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken
all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects
is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be
curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she
has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how
at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded
that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she
saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball
toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial
Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she,
of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block
the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was
something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just
then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we
were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable--almost too convincing. There was
really no need that Canada should have done other than she did--except
that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a
little too modest.
We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in
mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked
at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian,
mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of
'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their
businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among
themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our
Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is
all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat
is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with
anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places
at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and
the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time.
These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in
their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably
of other boats at the South end of this ocean--a quarter full of people
deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada
had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she
had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political
reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried
to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa)
lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which
astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst
with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our
talks ended on that note.
It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One
understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless
anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but
the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always
polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that
late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men
to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than
a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no
conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it
may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and
resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I
was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of
the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and
elsewhere--whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some
eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would
cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that
she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as
politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that
threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a
steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted--really these
people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse
against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.
[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.]
Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if
this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led
to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be
decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her
teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) England did not help
others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any
of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the
Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.
Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred
steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a
confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting
ritual. For the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--I heard
the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township
wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the
bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the
poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see
nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and
quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell
and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily
through the escapes. Then we went ahead.
The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The
maples along its banks had turned--blood red and splendid as the banners
of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the
maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more
happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their
Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and
they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after
point along their own beloved River--places where they played and fished
and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a
country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any
way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and
women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they
said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.'
At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a
coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way
to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands
the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any
other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's
glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as
usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other
people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was
removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable
trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the
background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. _Mercury_, making beautiful
and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River.
For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of
beautiful things--including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing
is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is,
happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the
battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and
association would be one of the most beautiful in our world.
Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the
thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped
car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble
with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides
of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding,
dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the
Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with
coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into
the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the
full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and
cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold
passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old
So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders
when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was _his_ Inner
Circle--the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to
stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each
feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be
Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta
in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the
Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for
the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the
river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the
South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.)
Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically
he said he loathed the city--but it was his.
'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?'
'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later
that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear
round the Empire.