The Canadian Commonwealth Part 15

II

What are the facts?

De Monts' first charter to Arcadia dates 1605. The first charter for Virginia plantations comes in 1606, and the first New England charter dates the same year. The United States and Canada are both fertile.

They have almost the same area in square miles. One has a population of over ninety millions and a foreign commerce of four billions. The other has a population of about eight millions and a foreign commerce of one billion. One raises from seven hundred to nine hundred million bushels of wheat; the other, from two hundred to three hundred millions. One produces thirty million metric tons of steel a year; the other, less than a million tons; one is worth a hundred and fifty billion dollars, the other perhaps ten billions.

It is explained that the northern belt of Canada lying in a semi-arctic zone should hardly be included in comparisons with the area of the United States lying altogether in a temperate zone; but if cultivation is proving one thing more than another, it is that Canada's arctic region recedes a little every year, and her isothermal lines run a little farther north every year. To put it differently, it is being yearly more and more proved that the degree of northern lat.i.tude matters less in vegetable growth than heretofore thought, if the arable land be there; for the simple reason that twenty hours of sunlight from May to September force as rapid a growth as twelve to fifteen hours'

sunlight from March to September, and the product grown in the North may be superior to that grown farther south. Wheat from Manitoba is better than wheat from Georgia. Apples from Niagara have a quality not found in apples--say from the Gulf states. All things will not grow in northern lat.i.tudes. You can't raise corn. You can't raise peaches. I doubt if any apple will ever be found suitable for the northwestern prairie. At any rate, it has not yet been found.

Half a century ago the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in perfectly good faith testified before a committee of the Imperial Commons that farming could never be carried on in Rupert's Land, or what are now known as Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. He proved that grain could not be grown there. I recall the day when the idea of fall wheat west of Lake Superior elicited a hoot of derision. I have lived to wander through fields of six hundred acres north of the Saskatchewan. Thirty years ago any one suggesting settlement on Peace River, or at Athabasca, would have been regarded as a visionary fool.

Yet wheat is ground into flour on Peace River, and the settler is at Athabasca; and soft Kansas fall wheat sent to Peace River has by a few years' transplanting been transformed into Number One Hard spring wheat. Canada's arctic belt has shrunk a little each year, and her isothermal lines gone a little farther north. The only limit to growth in the North Country is the nature of the soil. I am not, of course, speaking of the Arctic slope, but I am of the great belt of wild land north of Saskatchewan River. And where the arable land stops, the great fur farm of the world begins---a fur farm which may change but can never be exhausted. Of course, Canada has a great northern belt of land that is not arable, but in that belt are such precious minerals as were discovered in the Yukon. Land that can't be plowed isn't necessarily waste land, and Canada's great northern belt is partly balanced by the desert belt of the Southwest in the United States--the perpetual Indian land of Uncle Sam.

III

With this argument--you come back just where you began. The two countries were first settled almost contemporaneously. Their area is not far different. They are both fertile. Each has great belts--having spent months in each belt, I hesitate to call them barren--of land that can not be plowed. Why has one country progressed with such marvelous rapidity; and the other progressed in fits and starts and stops? Why did a million and a half Canadians--or one-fourth the native population--leave Canada for the United States?

The Canadian retort always is--for the same reason that two million Americans have left the United States for Canada--to better their position. But the point is--why was it these million and a half Canadians found better opportunities in the United States than in Canada? Opportunities knock at every man's door if he has ears to hear, but they are usually supposed to knock loudest and oftenest in the new land. It is a truism that there are ten chances on the frontier for a man to rise compared to one in the city. One can understand American settlers thronging to Canada. They have used and made good the opportunities in their own land. Now they are sending their sons to a land of more opportunities. The Iowa farmer who has succeeded on his three hundred and twenty acres sends forth his sons each to succeed on his one hundred and sixty acres in Canada; or he sells his own land for one hundred dollars an acre and forthwith buys a thousand acres in Canada. When the farmers of Ontario flocked to Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota and the two Dakotas, their land was worth thirty per cent. less than when they bought it. To-day that same land is worth one hundred per cent. more than for what they sold it.

It is easy to look over another land and diagnose its ills. Any Canadian will acknowledge that Ireland's population dropped from 8,500,000 in 1850 to 4,400,000 in 1908 solely owing to mismanagement, if not gross misgovernment; but he will not acknowledge that his own country lost a million and a half people from the same cause. Ireland lost her population at the rate of one hundred thousand a year for forty years, and that lost population helped to build up some of the greatest cities in the United States. The Irish vote is to-day a dominant power solely owing to that population lost to Ireland. It is no exaggeration to say that from 1880 to 1890 Canada lost her population to the United States at a higher rate than one hundred thousand a year. Why?

Go back a little in history! The most pugnacious United Empire Loyalist that ever trekked from the American colonies to Ontario and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would hardly deny that Canada was grossly misgoverned under the French regime. Laborers were forced to work unpaid on fortifications, on roads, on governors' palaces. The farmer was taxed to death in t.i.thes to the seignior. s.h.i.+pping was confined to French vessels owned by royal favorites. Fis.h.i.+ng was permitted only under a license. The fur trade was a corrupt monopoly held by a closed ring round the Royal Intendant. New France was so mis-governed that the sons of the best families took to the woods and the _Pays d'en Haut_--to which fact we owe the exploration of three-quarters of the continent.

And the most pugnacious Loyalist will hardly deny that under the British regime from 1759 to Durham's Report in 1840 the mismanagement was almost as gross as the misgovernment under the French. If any one entertain doubts on that score, let him look up the record on grants of thousands of acres to favorites of the Family Compact; on peculations of public funds in Quebec by irresponsible executives; on mistrials of disorders in the Fur Country, when North-Wester and Hudson's Bay traders cut each other's throats; on the constant bicker and bark between Protestant Ontario and Catholic Quebec, which kept the country rent by religious dissensions when men should have been empire-building.

Set down the cause of Canada's slow progress up to 1840 to misgovernment. Durham's Report remedied all that; and confederation followed in 1867. Was Canada's progress as swift after 1867 as it ought to have been? Examine a few figures:

In 1790 the United States population was four millions.

In 1800 the United States population was five millions.

In 1914 the United States population was ninety-eight millions.

In 1891 Canada's population was five millions.

In 1900 Canada's population was five million three hundred thousand.

In 1914 Canada's population was seven million eight hundred thousand.

In point of population Canada is just one hundred years behind the United States. Why? Granted her foreign trade is one-fourth as great as that of the United States. How is it that a people with such a genius for success in foreign trade have been so dilatory in their work of nation-building? Slow progress can no longer be ascribed to misgovernment. Her system of justice is one of the most perfect in the world. Her parliamentary representation could hardly be more complete.

No people has stricter bit and rein on executive ministers. Through an anguish of travail Canada has worked out an excellent system of self-government. Why is her progress still slow?

Of course one reason for her slow progress in the past was the impression that long prevailed regarding Canada's climate and agricultural possibilities. The officials of the Hudson's Bay Company contended that the Northwest was unfit for settlement, and it was only within recent times that the contrary view gained a hearing and proved to be true. With vast tracts of unoccupied land in the milder climate of the United States still open to settlement and with Canadians themselves denying that the great Northwest could be cultivated, it is not strange that most immigrants pa.s.sed Canada by. Furthermore in those days the glamour of democracy fascinated dissatisfied Europeans who swarmed to the New World. Canada was practically as free as the United States, but she was a possession of the British Crown, and many emigrants, especially from the Emerald Isle, preferred to try the experiment of living in a republic.

But there are other reasons. It was after the Civil War that the American high tariff struck Canada an unintended but nevertheless staggering blow. She had no market. She had to build up transportation system and trade routes, but this was well under way by 1890. Has her progress since 1890 kept pace with the United States?

One has but to compare the population between the Mississippi and Seattle with the population between Red River and Vancouver to have the answer to this question.

Is it something in the soul; a habit of discouragement; of marking time; of fighting shy on the defensive instead of jumping into the aggressive; of self-derogation; of criticism instead of construction; of foreshortened vision? A diagnosis can be made from symptoms. I set down a few of the symptoms. There may be many more, and the thinker must trace up--a surgeon would "guess"--his own diagnosis.

IV

If it were not such a tiresome task, it could be shown from actual quotations that there is not a paper published in Canada that at some time during the year does not deliver itself of sentiments regarding the United States which may be paraphrased thus: "We thank G.o.d we are not as Thou art!" Now the point may be well taken; and Canada should be thankful to G.o.d (and keep her powder dry) that crimes are punished, that innocence is protected, that vice is not a factor in civic government; but it is a dangerous att.i.tude for any people to a.s.sume toward another nation. It does not turn the soul-searchings in on self. It does not get down beneath the skin of things; down, for instance, beneath a hide of self-righteousness to meanness or n.o.bility of motive. A big s.h.i.+p always has barnacles; the United States is a big s.h.i.+p, and she keeps her engine going and her speed up and in the main her prow headed to a big destiny. It ill becomes a little s.h.i.+p to bark out--but let it be left unsaid!

While this curious a.s.sumption of superiority exists internationally, there is the most contradictory depreciation nationally. "We," they say, "are only a little people." So was Switzerland. So was Greece.

So was Belgium. So, indeed, were the Jews.

You never mention a Jim Hill, a Doctor Osler, a Schurman, a Graham Bell--or a host of similar famous expatriates--in a Canadian gathering but some one utters with a pride of gratulation that fairly beams from the face: "They are Canadians." Canada is proud these famous men are Canadians. It has always struck me as curious that she wasn't ashamed--ashamed that she lost their services from her own nation-building. To my personal knowledge three of these men had to borrow the money to leave Canada. Their services were worth untold wealth to other lands. Their services did not give them a living in Canada.

At time of writing--with only three exceptions--Canada imports the presidents of her great universities; though she exports some of the greatest presidents and deans who have ever graced Princeton, Cornell, Oxford. She thinks she can not afford to keep these men. Is it a matter of money, at all; or of appreciative intelligence? No matter what the cost, can Canada afford to lose them from her young nationals?

It is a truism that to my knowledge has not a single exception that Canada has never given the imprimatur of her approval to a writer, to an inventor, to a scholar, to an artist, till he has gone abroad and received the stamp of approval outside his own land. By the time Paul Peel was acclaimed in Paris and Horatio Walker in New York each was lost to his own land. It is an even wager nine Canadians out of ten do not know who these men were or for what they were acclaimed. Try it as an experiment on your first train acquaintance.

You can not read early records of Congress without the most astounding realization that Was.h.i.+ngton, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams, big statesmen and little politicians, voicing solemn convictions or playing to the gallery--all were deadly in earnest and serious about the business of building up a nation. They never lost sight of the idea of conserving, up-building, protecting, extending their country. The national idea is in Canada so recent that most men have not grasped it. "Build a navy?"

Canada hooted and made the vote a party football. "Canada should have her own s.h.i.+pyards?" Men look at you! What for? "Panama will reverse the world conduits of trade." Bah! Hot-air! I have heard these and similar comments not once but a thousand times.

Americans say of opportunity--"How much can we make of it?" Canadians say--"How little can we pay for it?" And each takes out of opportunity exactly the amount of optimism put into it.

So one could go down the list enumerating symptoms, but beneath them all, it is plain, lies a cause psychological, not physical. It may be a psychology of discouragement and disparagement from long years of hards.h.i.+p, but whatever it is, if Canada is to be as big nationally as she is lat.i.tudinally, as great in soul as in area, she must get rid of this negative thing in her att.i.tude to herself and life. It makes for solidity, but it also makes for stolidity. Nations do not grow great by what they leave undone. Psychologists say all mentality divides itself into two great cla.s.ses: those giving off negative response to stimulus; those giving off positive. One cla.s.s of people stands for carping criticism; the other, for constructive attempts. One is safe, to be sure, and sane; and the other is distinctively rash and dangerous; but of rashness and danger is valor made. "I know thy works," said the Voice to the Laodiceans, "that thou art neither hot nor cold: I would thou wert hot or cold . . . because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

And the Voice is the verdict of destiny to every nation that has taken its place at the world's council board.

CHAPTER XVI

DEFENSE

Having spent a hundred years working out a system of government almost perfect in its democracy, and having spent fifty more years working out a system of trade and transportation that gives Canada sixth rank in the gross foreign trade of the world nations--one would think the Dominion ent.i.tled to lie back resting on her laurels reaping the reward that is undoubtedly hers.

But nations can no more rest in their development than men. To stop means to go back. To rest means to rust, and Canada to-day must face one of the most serious problems in her national history. What is worth having is worth holding, and what is worth holding must always be defended. The strong man does not go out challenging a fight. The very fact that he is strong prevents other men challenging him to a fight, and Canada must face the need of national defense.

So remote did the need of national defense seem to Canada that as late as May of 1913 the Senate rejected Premier Borden's plan for Canada to contribute her quota in cost to the British navy. The Laurier government had proposed building a small navy for the Dominion. This was hooted by the French Nationalists, and when the Borden government came into power, the policy was modified from building a small navy to bearing a quota of the cost of a navy built and equipped by Imperial power. In the rejection of this policy, the composition of the Senate and Commons should be observed. The Commons were Conservative, or supporters of Premier Borden, and the Government Navy Bill pa.s.sed the Commons by one hundred and one to sixty-eight. The Nationalists voted with the opposition or the Liberals. The Nationalists are the small French party pledged against Canada's intervention in European affairs.

Laurier having been in power for almost two decades, the Senate was, of course, tinged with the Liberal policy. They could not completely reject a naval policy without repudiating Laurier's former policy; so they rejected the Borden Naval Bill on the ground that it ought to have been submitted to the electorate. The vote in the Senate was fifty-one to twenty-seven. In the Senate were fifty-four Liberals--or supporters of Laurier--and thirty-two Conservatives, or supporters of Borden. In other words, so remote did the possible need of defense seem that both parties played politics with it.

For a hundred years Canada had been at peace. The Rebellion of 1837 can hardly be called a war. In 1870 the Indian unrest known as the First Riel Rebellion had occurred, but this amounted to little more than a joy jaunt for the troops under Lord Wolseley to Red River. The Riel Uprising of 1885 was more serious; but every Canadian who gave the matter any thought at all knew there had been genuine cause for grievance among the half-breeds; and fewer lives were lost in this rebellion than in many a train or mine accident. Canada sent to the South African War troops who distinguished themselves to such an extent as to give a feeling of almost false security to the Dominion. On every frontier are men born to the rifle and the saddle--ready-made troopers; but as the frontier shrinks, this cla.s.s deteriorates and softens.

For a hundred years Canada has been at peace with the outside world.

For three thousand miles along her southern border dwells a neighbor who has often been a rival in trade and with whom Canada has had many a dispute as to fisheries and boundaries and tariff, but along this borderland of three thousand miles exists not a single fort, points not a single gun, watches not a single soldier. It is a question if another such example of international friends.h.i.+p without international pact exists in the history of the world. Where international boundaries in Europe bristle with forts and cannon, international boundaries in America are a shuttle of traffic back and forth of great migrations of population, of great waves of friends.h.i.+p and good feeling which all the trade rivalries and hostile tariffs of a half century have failed to stem. The pot shot of some fishery patrol across the nets of a poacher on the wrong side of the international line fails to excite anybody. Even if some flag lunatic full of whisky climbs a flagstaff and tears down the other country's national emblem--the boundary does not go on fire. The authorities cool such alcoholic patriotism with a water hose, or ten days in the lock-up. The papers run a half column, and that is all there is about it.

So why should Canada become excited over national defense? On the south is a boundary without a fort, without a gun, guarded by a powerful nation with a Monroe Doctrine challenging the world neither to seize nor colonize in the Western Hemisphere. On the east for three thousand miles washes the Atlantic, on the west for five thousand miles the Pacific--what has Canada to fear? "Why," asked the Conservatives, "should we support the Laurier policy of building a tin-pot navy?"

"Why," retorted the Liberals when Laurier went out and Borden went in, "should we support the Borden Navy Bill to contribute good Canadian cash to a British navy?"

Besides, in the back of Canada's collective head--as it were--in a sort of unspoken consciousness was the almost religious conviction that the Dominion had contributed her share toward Imperial defense in her transportation system. Had she not granted fifty-five million acres of land for the different transcontinentals and spent far over a billion in loans and subsidies and guarantees? Value that land at ten dollars an acre. That was tantamount to an expenditure of two hundred dollars per capita for a transportation system of use to the empire in Imperial defense. Seventy trainloads of Hindu troops were rushed across Canada in cars with drawn blinds and transported to Europe before the enemy knew such a movement was contemplated. Should Turkey ever cut off Suez, Canada and Panama would be England's route to India. In addition, Canada considers herself the granary of the empire. Should Suez ever cut off the path to India and Australia, what colony could feed England but Canada?

You will note that Canada's thought concerned the empire, not herself.

The reason for the navy bills proposed by both parties has been Imperial defense. That Canada might some day be compelled to fight for her own existence--and fight to the death for it--never dawned on her legislators; and their unconsciousness of national peril is the profoundest testimony to the pacific intentions of the United States that could be given. It seems almost treason at this era of world war to call Canada's attention to the fact that the greatest danger is not to Imperial defense. It is to Canada's national defense. Uncle Sam has been Canada's big brother, but what if when the danger came, his arms were tied in a conflict of his own? Whatever comes to menace the United States will menace the safety of Canada; and with swift cruisers, Europe and Asia are nearer Canada to-day than Halifax is near Vancouver. Either city could be attacked by foreign powers before military aid could be transported across the width of Canada. We are nearer Europe to-day than the North was near the South in the Civil War. It takes a shorter time to transport troops across Atlantic or Pacific than it formerly took to send a Minnesota regiment to Maryland.