Part 15 (2/2)

They are living in an imaginary world those of us who a.s.sert that Canada could remain a British Colony under a permanent agreement--never to be amended--by which the Mother Country would be bound to defend her, at all costs and all hazards, whenever and by whomsoever attacked, Canada in the meantime refusing, whatever the perils of England might be, to spend a dollar and to send one man for her defence. There could be but one issue to the consideration of such propositions: the dissolution of the British Empire. I regret to say that Mr. Boura.s.sa has audaciously declared that such has been the objective of his oppositionist campaign to the Canadian partic.i.p.ation in Imperial wars.

If Canada, through its const.i.tutional organ, the Ottawa Parliament, had signified to England, in 1914, that she would not take the least part in the war imposed upon her by Germany, nor do anything to help her Allies, France and Belgium, could she, without blus.h.i.+ng with shame, have claimed the protection of the British flag, if her territory had been attacked.

Would not England have been fully justified in taking the initiative to break the bond which could henceforth but be disastrous to her, our shameless att.i.tude towards her, at the hour of her peril, being most favourable to her mortal enemy.

Have I not every sound reason to conclude that Canadian partic.i.p.ation in the present war was in no way whatever the outcome of an Imperialist attempt to drag her, against her will, in the conflict into which she so n.o.bly hastened to enter with the determination to fight to the last, and to deserve her fair share of the glory which will be but one of the rewards that will accrue to all those who will have united together to save Liberty and Civilization from the German barbarous onslaught.

CHAPTER XXII.

BRITISH IMPERIALISM NATURALLY PACIFIST.

According to its ”Nationalist” opponents, British Imperialism has always been of a conquering nature, like that of the Roman type and those of ancient history.

This opinion is formally contradicted by a long succession of undeniable historical facts. Undoubtedly the splendid structure of the British Empire was not erected without armed support. The creation, without an army organization, of a Sovereign State comprising a fourth of the Globe, which component parts, themselves of colossal proportions, situated in all the continents, separated by the immensity of the seas, would have been more than marvellous.

I will not pretend that always and everywhere the expansion of British Sovereignty has taken place according to the dictates of strict justice.

Still I do not hesitate to say that, on the whole, it has developed under conditions which were never the outcome of a mere conquering ambition.

With much reason, English citizens are proud of the fact that their Empire is the result of a NATURAL GROWTH. When the call to arms had to be made, it was oftener for DEFENSIVE WARS.

The British Empire, outside the United Kingdom, comprise, for the most important part, Canada, Australia, the South African Dominion, and India. It is easy to explain, in a few lines, under what general circ.u.mstances those immense regions were brought under the British flag.

I shall, of course, begin this short historical review by the acquisition of Canada by England.

The great event of the discovery of the New World, at the end of the fifteenth century, tempted the western European nations to acquire vast colonies in the new continent. Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, were the first in the field. If the craving for large colonies in the new Hemisphere was of Imperialist inspiration, England does not appear to have been one of the first Powers infested with the disease so dreaded by our ”Nationalists”. She was rather late to catch it. Hollanders settled in New York before the British.

As all ought to know, Spain took hold of the whole of Southern America.

France displayed her flag on the larger part of Northern America, commanding the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers, and the Great Lakes.

Those immense regions, extending from the cold north to flowery Louisiana, were called NEW FRANCE. Later on, that part of North America bordering on the Atlantic, from Maine to Virginia, became British, and was subdivided into thirteen provinces, or separate colonies. For such a dominating Imperialist, as some pretend she has ever been, it must be admitted that England was rather in a modest frame of mind with regard to her colonial enterprises. The British Government itself was slow in moving towards the Imperialist goal which was stirring up Spain and France to a much greater activity. The first British emigrants were Puritans looking for that religious liberty, under a new s.h.i.+ning sun, which was denied to them by their native land in those days when fanaticism was unfortunately too much triumphant in many countries.

As it was inevitable, the European Colonies in America, all satellites of their metropolis, fell victims to the political rivalries of the nations who settled them. Not satisfied with fighting in Europe, those Powers also decided to gratify the New World with a specimen of what they could do on the battlefields. The Seven Years War did not originate in America, as it was the outcome of secular European international difficulties.

If the European nations, in taking possession of America, were making a conquest, it was that of the white race over the yellow one of the New World. Spain and France, in raising their flags over four-fifths of the American continent, were surely strengthening Imperialism. Will our ”Nationalists” accuse them of having unduly saved the New World from the secular Indian barbarism?

More especially, Spanish Imperialism in America was most despotic. By a very false political conception, Spain undertook a great settlement work in America with the sole object of bleeding her colonies to her only profit. It failed disastrously as it deserved to. It is because she persevered in her fatal error that, in 1898, she was forced out of Cuba.

The last stone of her immense colonial edifice was cast away.

England shared Spain's error, but much less heavily. Like Spain, she reaped what she had sowed. The thirteen British American colonies revolted and conquered their Independence. Alone French Canada remained loyal to England.

If the French Canadians had sided with the British Colonies to the South in the contest for their Independence, the Canada of those days would certainly have been included in the American Republic when England was forced, by the fate of war, to acknowledge the new Sovereign nation. Her offspring then violently broke away from the parental home, but has recently hastened to her defence, at the hour of danger, only remembering the first happy years of her childhood.

Following the loyal advice of their spiritual leaders, and of their most trusted civil chieftains, the French Canadians remained true to England, refusing to desert her, thus maintaining her Sovereign rights over the Northern half of the Continent destined, a century later, to develop into the present Dominion, enjoying the free inst.i.tutions of the Mother Country.

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