(_May, 1917_)
I come into Canada to a great free country, composed not only of
friends, but of countrymen. We think the same thoughts, we live in
the same civilization, we belong to the same Empire, and if anything
could have cemented more closely the bonds of Empire, if anything could
have made us feel that we were indeed of one flesh and one blood, with
one common history behind us, if anything could have cemented these
feelings, it is the consciousness that now for two years and a half
we have been engaged in this great struggle, in which, I thank God,
all North America is now at one. We have been engaged in this great
struggle through these two years and a half, fighting together, when
necessary making all our sacrifices in common, working together toward
a common and victorious end, which I doubt not will crown our efforts.
May I, as a countryman of yours, though not a citizen of Toronto, may I
say how profoundly the whole Empire feels the magnitude of the effort
you have made, and how we value it for itself and for an example to all
posterity, an evidence to the whole world of what the British Empire
really means, not only for the whole of that civilized body of nations
of which we form no inconsiderable part.
These are proud thoughts; they will some day be proud memories. We are
associated together in a struggle never equalled yet in the history
of the world, and I rejoice to think that in that struggle on which
posterity will look back as the greatest effort made for freedom and
civilization, the British Empire in every one of its constituent parts,
and surely not least in this great Dominion, in this proud Province,
and in this city not least, has shown what the unity of the Empire
really means, and how vain were the anticipations of those who thought
that we were constituted but a fair-weather Empire, to be dissolved
into thin atoms at the first storm that should burst upon it.
We have, on the contrary, shown that the more storms beat on the fabric
of our Empire the more firmly it held together, and were so far from
shaking it in any single part. Events that have recently occurred, that
are occurring, and that will occur in the future, will join every part
of it together for ever in memories which will remain with us, the
actors in this great drama, until we die, and which we shall be able
to hand to our children and our grandchildren as long as civilization
exists.