Vol. XXIX, No. 3 



WASHINGTON 



March, 1916 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BREAD UPON THE WATERS: 

 CANADA AND HER OTHER DAUGHTERS* 



By William Howard Taft 



THE strain of the great war now 

 raging is a test of the character of 

 the peoples engaging in it, and of 

 the institutions to which they have com- 

 mitted themselves and in behalf of which 

 for decades and centuries they have 

 labored. It places their ideas of govern- 

 ment and their philosophies of the life 

 in a crucible under the intensest heat. It 

 is no respecter of preconceived theories, 

 and it lays bare weaknesses that were 

 not suspected. The war has shown a 

 high spirit of patriotism and self-sacri- 

 fice as the common trait of all those en- 

 gaged in it. 



In England the war has betrayed, the 

 delays and blunders in the beginning of a 

 war which it seems impossible to avoid 

 in a parliamentary government. 



England's course in this war has con- 

 firmed the view that if war is to be a 

 normal condition of national and inter- 

 national life, popular government, with a 

 free press and unrestrained public opin- 

 ion, is not the best form adapted to act 

 quickly and to overwhelm an enemy. 



Its inherent disadvantage in the outset 

 of a war is not only a reason why it 

 should avoid war when it can do so with 

 honor and without national sacrifice, but 

 it is also a reason why it should in time 

 of peace make every reasonable prepara- 

 tion for national defense consistent with 

 individual liberty and the control of the 

 people. 



It is not true that popular government 

 unfits a people for war, saps their un- 

 selfish patriotism, or dulls their willing- 

 ness to make the sacrifice. The armies of 

 France raised in the wars of the French 

 Revolution refute any such notion. Our 

 own Civil War shows that participation 

 in government and the consequent sense 

 of ownership in it prompt the highest 

 spirit of sacrifice for the country. 



Many counsels in a democracy may 

 confuse or may prevent the needed con- 

 centration of power in one competent 

 leader or body of leaders to produce wise 

 and quick action, but the fault is not in 

 the willingness or capacity of the citizens 

 to make good soldiers. Training in pop- 

 ular government and traditional love of 

 civil liberty stir the souls of men to costly 

 conflict, even when their material inter- 

 ests and their opportunities for evading 

 its sacrifices tempt them to withhold their 

 aid. 



the lesson which the American 



revolution taught great britain 



has been worth ale it 



COST HER 



We find such an instance in the con- 

 duct of the people of Canada, Australia, 

 and South Africa, under the wise and 

 generous treatment of them by Great 

 Britain, their mother country, for half a 

 century. It is a pleasure for a student 

 of popular constitutional government to 



*An address to the National Geographic Society, February n, 1916 



