Chapter 10 - Page 2

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