ULTIMATE POLITICS. 8i 



reading, the driblets of cable items will greatly remedy our (assumed) 

 ignorance. 



But I need not dwell on the point. You agree that thus far no 

 practicable scheme of Imperial Federation has been broached and 

 no practicable method of bringing it about; and " imperial organiza- 

 tion," so far as I can guess, must mean Imperial Federation or some 

 Pollock or Chamberlain plan of the same thing by some other name. 

 Imperial Councils or what not, destined by their astute planners to 

 grow unbeknownst " by a process of gradual development . . . 

 into a new government with large powers of taxation and legislation 

 over countries separated by thousands of miles of sea," as Mr. 

 Chamberlain once put it. 



For the present, at least, you reject any formal plan of centrali- 

 zation. Yet you seem ready to subscribe to a centralization which 

 makes Imperial Federation by comparison seem the essence of 

 autonomy. You take exception to Mr. Thomson's vision of peace- 

 league but not necessarily war-league between the free nations of 

 the Empire, bound together only by a common King, and maintain 

 that Canada could not remain neutral were Britain assailed. I grant 

 that were Britain assailed, in a death-grapple with Germany, for ex- 

 ample, Canada would strain every nerve in aid. But don't you 

 calmly assume that in all the wars in which Britain is engaged she 

 is " assailed " rather than " assailing " ? A recollection of the pro- 

 cess by which the British Empire has expanded from 120,000 square 

 miles to 12,000,000,might suggest that she has had at least her share of 

 attacking and of benevolent assimilation. There are real difficulties 

 in any plan of Canadian neutrality while Britain is at war, I admit, 

 but they are not so serious as the problems presented by the proposal 

 to accept all Britain's wars as ours. We would doubtless send our 

 fleet to help Britain defend New Zealand from that Chinese invasion 

 which your soldier friend anticipates in his masterpiece of pessimism, 

 but would we send it to help in another Opium War, to help force 

 again on China the curse from which she is attempting to free her- 

 self? Would our British Columbia regiments join the troops of 

 Britain's ally, Japan, in the contingency of an attack on Oregon? 

 But delenda est Germania. Yes, but yesterday it ran delenda est 

 Gallia. Ten years ago, in Fashoda days, the very panic-mongers 

 who are now crying out that a struggle with Germany is inevitable 

 were demonstrating that France, for centuries Britain's foe, must 

 be her foe for ever. The kaleidoscope of shifting alliances may 

 bring Britain and France face to face again. Would any respon- 



