Canadian Poets of the Great War 



I must be pardoned for the far from original remark that a 

 period of intense national exaltation is usually followed by a period 

 of intense literary activity. The Augustan Age, the Medicean, the 

 Isabellan, the Elizabethan, the Louis XIV, the Victorian — are they 

 not common examples ? Sometimes local difficulties have prevented 

 the sequence, such as in the United States after the Revolution, and in 

 Canada after the migration of the Loyalists — though in the end these 

 movements have produced profound effects in thought and expres- 

 sion; for even if the "Gieat American novel," and the Great Cana- 

 dian one, be still missing, the traditions of Independence and of 

 United Empire have both been vastly fruitful. It is fair to prognosti- 

 cate an intense literary activity in Canada, as Avell as elsewhere, in the 

 near future, resulting from the Great War and it is well to scrutinize 

 the straws in the wind even now, because that literary activity will 

 not be merely a bookish matter, but a voice issuing out of our people's 

 deepest soul. 



What took place after that much less stirring, although momen- 

 tous event, Confederation ? Momentous, for Confederation made 

 us a nation. By the way, it is amusing to hear every now and then 

 that So-and-so "made Canada a nation." The feat has been attri- 

 buted to at least a dozen different gentlemen by their admirers on 

 fanciful grounds, from time to time; and to the C.P.R., and the 

 McKinley tariff. But regarding even the superior claim of the 

 Fathers of Confederation, had as many as two of them any real idea 

 of the effects of what they were doing, beyond the solution of the 

 old Provincial deadlock ? Was it not only after the deed was done 

 that the true scope of it began to dawn on our people ? 



The word "nation" itself is one used in too many senses, and 

 needs some standardization by the British Academic Committee, 

 or, in a suggestive way, by some such literary body as The Royal 

 Society of Canada. At any rate a word used in so many confusing 

 senses as "The Five Nations" for the Iroquois tribes; "la nation 

 canadienne" for the French-Canadian race, in Lord Durham's 

 Report, and its French sources; "le parti national" for the old Mer- 

 cier Race Party in Quebec; "the British nation" for the people of thé 

 British Isles, and also for the British Imperial stock; "the Scotch 

 nation", "the Irish nation," for two dialectic British provinces 



