ULTIMATE POLITICS. 



75 



The key to English-speaking union must be the independence of 

 Canada — by independence I mean independence within the Empire, 

 and of the United States. Conversely, the great danger in the way 

 of the ultimate ideal is the unprecedented, enormous, overweening, 

 and (in the Miltonic sense) Satanic pride of the United States. Ab- 

 sorption of Canada by the United States would confirm and 

 if possible increase that pride, and probably renew the older tendency 

 of the United States to live within this continent, to care nothing for 

 the outside world, and to omit to take that part in the world's business 

 which the British Empire has done and is doing, on the whole with 

 advantage to humanity. Our independence, our growth as a second 

 great power on the North American continent (with its standing re- 

 minder that they are not the only great people even on their own 

 hemisphere), our continued and increasing participation in world- 

 politics as a part of the Empire, seem to me to furnish that factor 

 which will bring the American Republic into association with Britain 

 and the rest of the English-speaking world. And apart from the 

 sensations which they will feel as they see the northern fringe which 

 they hitherto have disregarded growing into a civilization and a 

 polity in some respects superior to their own, there is this further 

 consideration, that the more they deal in world-politics the more will 

 it be driven home to the Americans that the Empire is their best 

 friend and probably their only friend. 



The essence of our independence is the continued cultivation of 

 that stubborn loyalty which is bound to be aggressive in some of its 

 manifestations. It is above all necessary to stand by our own indi- 

 viduality, to uphold our own institutions, to keep unimpaired our 

 heritage of national spirit. There is no danger that our cultivation 

 of our individual national life as opposed to American ideals will 

 lead to war; should it do so, I say deliberately that such a war, 

 waged to preserve our precious national identity, would benefit us. 

 Who can doubt that the tradition of unflinching, stubborn loyalty 

 which has been bequeathed to us by 1812 is a heritage so precious 

 as far to overshadow the suffering and loss of the time ? In saying 

 this I do not wish to be understood as desiring war ; having seen it, 

 I have a lively sense of its gravity. I simply do not anticipate it. 

 Nor do I regard it as the worst of all evils. It simply is one of 

 several evils, and like other trials may give us compensations. 



You dread Imperial organization as furnishing an obstacle to 

 the larger union. I cannot agree. Fifty years ago a thinker with 

 your ideals probably would have viewed Britain's and Canada's 



