LII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
speaking some twenty different languages in these schools. They are 
there by right. His Excellency described to the Canadian Club of 
Winnipeg the neatness, “set up,” air of self-respect and sprightliness 
of these pupils. There was a Russian boy who had only been half-a-year 
in the country commanding with distinction one of the companies of 
the splendid body of 1,500 cadets of the Winnipeg schools. In these 
schools the children sing the patriotic songs of Britain and Canada, and 
over every publie school in Manitoba the Union Jack is hoisted on every 
school day. The reading books in all of the provinces are full of patri- 
otic selections. There is no honor more regarded by these young 
foreigners of Icelandic, Scandinavian, German or Ruthenian blood than 
to be called Canadians. These diverse nations are forming one nation. 
So in the higher educational institutions. The University of Manitoba, 
formed by a union of religious bodies, under the ægis of the state, which 
this year examined upwards of 1,200 candidates, finds some of its best 
students among these foreign immigrants. In 1909 the Rhodes scholar 
of Manitoba was Skuli Johnson, son of an Icelandic immigrant, and 
again in 1910 the Rhodes scholar is Joseph Thorson, who last year, in 
receiving a gold medal for public speaking from the hand of the writer, 
afterward objected to the reference to his Icelandic origin, maintaining 
that he was born and educated in Winnipeg and was therefore a Cana- 
dian. 
PROBLEMS. 
In this discussion of Canadian unity there are, however, two 
problems which cannot be avoided. The first of these is : 
(f) The Foreigners.—Canadian legislation very distinctly provides 
for excluding unsuitable immigrants. But this must be done with 
reason, for it will be remembered that the chief reason of the South 
African war was to compel the Transvaal to be just to the Uitlanders. 
Will the foreigners make intelligent and useful Canadians? With 
the Mennonites and Icelanders, who came a third of a century ago and 
have answered this question satisfactorily, we need not deal. 
The two bodies of foreigners from the Continent of Europe—the 
Doukhobors and Ruthenians—are those about whom the controversy 
rages. 
Of the Doukhobors, a sect similar to the Quakers who came from 
the Russian Caucasus, and number from eight to ten thousand, it may 
be said that they are a stalwart race, are communists, vegetarians, live 
normally in villages,andareasarule a moral and religious people. Under 
the persuasion of the Government one-third of them have given up the 
village system and are settled on their homesteads. A portion of them 
have removed from Saskatchewan, where they were all settled, to the 
