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(With apologies to the many audiences who have heard me promise to start it, without my having yet made good.)

I purpose to discuss the question: How Soon Can We Start the Next War? And I want to say at once that on this question I am an optimist. I think that things are coming our way. Now, I don’t say that we can have the war for this autumn. It’s getting a little too late and the football season has been interfering with it; and of course Xmas is approaching and that’s apt to bring along with it a rather nasty outbreak of good will which is troublesome while it lasts. But even allowing for these temporary delays I think we can all look forward pretty confidently to what we may call a general conflagration in the near future. Some of our friends already talk hopefully of an Armageddon which may end in world chaos. So I think that we shall certainly get something; if not this winter at any rate early in the spring.

But I want to say at once that if this world war does come, we on this North American continent—Canadians and Americans—can take very little credit for it. I say it straight out; we have not been doing our share. We have been hanging back at a time when over in Europe they have been making such splendid efforts towards a general war.

We have to realize that in the older civilization they have developed a mechanism that we haven’t got—a system of ‘conversations’ and ‘incidents’ and ‘protocols’ and ‘ultimatums,’ by which No. 10 Downing Street talks to the Quai D’Orsay, and by which they both address an identical ‘communique’ to the Ball Platz which, being a Ball Platz, plays it right across fast to the Yildiz Kiosk, and from there to the Escurial, and then home. All that we seem able to do is to send a Minister in a plug hat from Ottawa to Washington to play golf, and bring back two others like himself to Ottawa to fish in the Gatineau. You can’t make a war out of that stuff.

We have to remember, too, that they have long since got the map of Europe all fixed up for war. They have a set of ‘corridors,’ by which one nation’s territory runs right through another’s and out on the other side; and they have little places called ‘enclaves,’ meaning a piece of one nation’s territory entirely surrounded by the territory of another. Then there are bits with special names like the Sandjak of Novi-Bazaar, and the Casino of Monte Carlo, and the Folies Bergère republic—one reads of them. There is territory that is ‘internationalized’ and ‘neutralized’ and ‘sterilized’ and ‘stupefied.’

Now if we want to take our proper place in the world we have got to get these things. A little while ago—I hope I am not violating official secrets in telling you about it—I was instrumental in starting a correspondence between our Canadian External Affairs Department at Ottawa and the American Secretary of State at Washington in regard to the possibility of opening a ‘corridor.’ Our Department telegraphed:

Would like to offer you a corridor to the Hudson Bay, air-conditioned.

The American Secretary answered:

We are ignorant of where the Hudson Bay stops (stop) But that sort of thing never stops us (stop) Gladly accept corridor and offer you in return enclave west side of Chicago.

Our Government sent a telegram back in reply:

Not very keen on west side of Chicago; how about Hollywood, California?

Here the matter stands at present. It is what they call in European diplomacy an impasse. If you keep it up long enough, you get a war.

But there is more in the situation even than that. In Europe, for centuries and centuries, they have cultivated the idea of nationality, till they now have themselves divided up in their minds into nations, in which they understand that every person in one nation is altogether different from every person in any other nation. In this way of thinking one Englishman is just the same as every other Englishman, and all of them quite different from all Frenchmen; and every Frenchman is just like every other Frenchman and all different from every kind of German—and so on right down to Chinese and Canadians. There was a lot of truth in this a thousand years ago; there is hardly any now. But European politics are still working on this system. It was grand in the days of Charlemagne; now, worse than meaningless, it is the chief impediment to progress.

But there the imaginary nations are, still persisting in their existence.

You see them best perhaps, as you do so many things, in comic literature. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, if I were allowed to talk upon humour as a serious matter I would try to show you that perhaps sometimes we can get a clearer view of the world by reading what is called its humour, looking at its comic characters, than by looking at its serious phases.

First, the imaginary Frenchman, still seen in the comic stage and still used as the basis of the world’s politics; always called Alphonse or Gaston; wears a bell-shaped coat; eats frogs; prefers other men’s wives to his own; good taste but no morals.

Put beside him the Englishman; hay-coloured hair and straw-coloured whiskers; has only one eye—the other is glass. Why Englishmen prefer to have a glass eye, I don’t know. But it is so. To be a real Englishman you must have only one eye; and you must use words like ‘rippin’ ’ and ‘toppin’,’ and say ‘my deah fellah, I haven’t seen you since the Baw Wah, eh, what.’ The Englishman has a title, or his cousin has, and is very stand-offish but needs watching or he’ll borrow money.

Contrasted with him is the imaginary Irishman; always saying ‘Arrah’ and ‘Macushla’ and ‘Mavourneen’; always ready for a fight; no respect for law; makes a fine policeman.

Next to him is one type that I admit has something in it, the Scotchman. I lean towards him, but not from any point of descent. I have no Scotch in me except what I put in. But you know that imaginary Scotchman who, I will say, has perhaps kept his national characteristics more stubbornly than the others; very hard, very dour; believes in hell—hopes to go there; looks on any other place as not economical enough.

Contrast with this what one might call the true international spirit and the international type, just coming, perhaps, into existence. I can illustrate it by quoting a little anecdote that I read in the paper the other day.

A young man at a dance approached a girl and said, ‘I’d love to ask you for a dance, but I have to admit I’m just a little stiff from polo.’ ‘Oh,’ said the girl, ‘I don’t care where you come from; let’s dance.’

That was a truly international girl. We ought to have more like her.

But having all these imaginary beings going strong, we keep up the conviction that the world is divided into nations. Mind, if I were speaking to you this morning as a political scientist—a forbidden rôle—I would be willing to say that, yes, of course in the past the nation was a wonderful thing; the nation as a conception in history was at one time the salvation of Europe. At the time when all Europe was strewn with the wreckage of the Roman Empire, prostrate under barbarian invasion, at the time when the peace and civilization of the Antonine Emperors had been scattered into fragments, the upbuilding of the European nations, around a castle here or a cliff there or a harbour somewhere else, the upbuilding of the European nations is a wonderful story. ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Progress’ were one and the same thing. And with that story still goes the marvellous allegiance, the pride of race, which has been so wonderful for all of us—the tattered flags, the long history of victories and struggles that have made our countries what they are. All of that we must never forget, never throw aside. For the trouble with the new cosmopolitanism is that it tries in vain to turn its back on history. You can’t do that. There is no need to. But when the world gets a little wiser, all our history will become a common product in which each and all of us can take pride in the achievements of the other people.

Look at our North American history and realize that, now the fires of anger have died out, there is no sorrow in the record; there is only the twin glory of an equal contest, a Wolfe and a Montcalm pitted against one another, and an American Revolution in which, as usual, both sides are right. They always are. In any epic contest, like the civil war of long ago in England, and the civil war of yesterday in America, both sides are right, or the war would never go on. We must never think that internationalism, which I am preaching indirectly, should force us to turn our backs on the splendour of national history. That has been the inspiration of every great people.

But the world has got to realize that time moves on, that the salvation of one era is the ruin of another, and that the thing carried over from one generation to another, once noble, can lose its meaning, and perhaps spell disaster. The world must unify or die. And it cannot be done with books or pen and ink or with corridors or enclaves. The Quai D’Orsay can’t do it; 10 Downing Street or the Ball Platz can’t do it. Nothing can do it except a new spirit in the human heart.

Let us pass on then to measure some of the forces working in each direction, for nationalism and against it. And first we have that powerful instrument, the League of Nations. Those are the boys who make trouble! The League of Nations, without whose kind offices we would never know half the quarrels that are going on in the world. But they keep us well informed. We have had more accurate history of other people’s wars since the League began to function than we ever dreamed of.

I have been privileged to see a little of their correspondence for next year. They hope next year to be able to do something as between Wales and Scotland. And I have here an advance copy of a letter from the Secretary of the League of Nations to the business manager of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland:

Reverend Sir:

I write on behalf of the League to inquire whether you would feel interested in getting up a war this season between the Scotch and the Welsh. As you are doubtless aware, the Welsh have been saying a lot of dirty things about Scotland. There was one here in our office yesterday said he could lick any three of you north of the Tweed. And we think we ought to bring it to your notice and ask if you are prepared to stand for it. If not, the League offers its publicity at any rate that you think suitable. We will also supply propaganda. We have a good deal of dirty stuff against them ready to give to you and we will help you to float an international loan in the United States—and sink it there.

Ah, but observe the answer, and in this answer, which the Scotch are to send, you see the first slight warning note that perhaps there may be difficulties in getting up a war. This is from the business manager of the Presbyterian Church:

Cable

Secretary, League of Nations, Geneva.

Collect.

Regret to say that war with the Welsh practically out of question Stop Great interest international bagpipe competition Inverness keeps our people breathless Stop Apprehend war financially injurious to the interest Scotch International Aberdeen Terrier Show Stop

Aha! Notice that. The dogs, wiser than men, know nothing of our little quarrels. The Aberdeen terrier, an international character, wagging his tail in every quarter of the globe and holding his international show! We have to deal with him. So you see the Scotch, much though they would like to get into this business, are held back. Their cable ends:

Suggest you apply instead Japanese Bureau of Oriental Love Stop But send us that Loan Anyway Stop

Again I would not wish to be disparaging of the League of Nations. Everybody says it is a good thing, and it must be. Some day, if we live long enough, we shall see it in real operation. And it is not the fault of the League; it is the fault of us, its ‘unseen assassins,’ as Norman Angell calls us. There can never be a league of nations, there can never be any institution, until there is a spirit outside which sanctions and maintains it, a spirit which corresponds to it. And the world is not yet ready for that.

But even then it is well to keep the form, perhaps, while still the substance is lacking. Let us be like Pygmalion and have the statue first and put the right spirit into our Galatea afterwards, and let the League at any rate stand for an aspiration of the future.

Of course, mind you, when I say that we, each and all of us, are working against the common welfare, perhaps you do not realize how much there is, how many small minor annoyances in which all Americans sneer at all Englishmen or all Englishmen sneer at all Americans.

You remember that famous character of Alphonse Daudet’s, Tartarin of Tarascon, that mock-hero of southern France filled with the meridional spirit. You recall how it was rumoured that he was, after all his tall talk, not going to Africa to hunt the lions, and there was a mob collected around his house to mock at him, and Tartarin, facing the crowd, threw himself up into one of his noble postures and said—‘Des coups d’épée, messieurs, mais pas de coups d’épingles!’ (‘Strike me with a sword if you like, but not with pinpricks.’) It is the pinpricks very often that are the major offence.

I have gathered here (as Exhibit No. 4) some little extracts that were actually taken from the press, just coloured a little, not much, and they—well, sometimes truth is not good enough, and half the truth is better, just as half a brick carries further in an argument than a whole one. I have gathered together specimens of those pleasing little comments that pass back and forth across the Atlantic, in which some English traveller comes out here, takes a look for a week, let us say, at our education, and then denounces it. You see if he had approved it that wouldn’t be news. News has to be dirty and disagreeable. Happiness is never news, only misfortune.

Well, you get this kind of thing: Extract from the New York Press:

NEW YORK, SUCH AND SUCH A DATE

DENOUNCES AMERICAN EDUCATION

Mr. Farquhar McSquirt, who holds a high position in the kindergarten department of the Scottish Orphan Asylum at Dumn Foolish, landed yesterday from the ‘Moratorium’ on a tour of American and Canadian schools and at once uttered a scathing denunciation of education on this continent. He considers that the whole system of education in America is punk. He admits the pupils attend school, but denies that they learn anything. He considers that the average boy of twelve in the Orkney Islands knows more than a graduate of Harvard.

So he may, perhaps. It wouldn’t hurt him.

The American student, he says, has never learned to think, whereas the Scotch boy begins to think soon after he learns to talk

Well, he goes on with half a column of that kind of thing. And then of course, when he has said all that, half a dozen college presidents have to be called up to know whether that is so. And then they say, in denying it, that they ‘have not the honour of knowing Mr. McSquirt personally,’ etc.—That is the dirtiest thing you can say about any man. If you want to get after a person good and hard, just say you don’t know him, personally—never heard of him.

However, before they have time to wipe it all up, the account is balanced from the other side, from London. Thus:

DENOUNCES OXFORD

Mr. Phineas Q. Cactus, TQ, PF, president and principal of the Texas Agricultural Institute for Feeble-Minded Navajo Indians, uttered a scathing denunciation of the University of Oxford. He says that after a man leaves Oxford he is fit for nothing except the House of Lords, or the church, or the bar. He claims that the average Oxford professor would make only a poor showing as a cowboy in Texas.

But of course the most cruel denunciation is when they start at our women. Now, there you touch us where we live! When any outsider dares for a moment to criticize our English women, or our American women, then we rise, the whole nation solid in a lump. Listen to this:

DENOUNCES AMERICAN GIRLS

Lady Violet Longshanks, a direct descendant of Edward I in the male line, landed yesterday from the ‘Rule Britannia’ and at once gave an interview to the press which has practically jarred society off its hinges. Lady Violet who represents the ‘haut ton’ of the oldest ‘noblesse’ and is absolutely ‘carte blanche,’ gave expression to a scathing denunciation of the American Girl. She declares that the American Girl has no manners, doesn’t know how to enter a room, still less how to get out again when she is in, and doesn’t even know how to use her feet.

Well, that is awful! So, naturally, of course, the press send out warm tokens of assurance to the effect that the American girl will use her feet if Lady Violet doesn’t get a move on back to England.

Then back comes a similar denunciation from the other side:

DENOUNCES ENGLISH GIRLS

Mrs. Potter Pancake, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, President of the American Women’s International Friendship League, has just jarred English society off its base by a denunciation handed out from the window of her hotel against English girls. Mrs. Pancake says the English girl is without grace and her movements inferior to those of a horse. She attributes this to the fact that the English girl drinks gin in inordinate quantities.

Well, of course, when you get to that, that might lead to a serious situation, but in England they have one or two old-fashioned remedies that can always be brought out to put oil on the troubled waters. For instance, somebody can ask a question in the House of Commons. Just why they do it, or what the questions mean, I don’t know, but in this connection, of course, somebody would probably have risen up and asked whether ‘ministers’—they never use the definite article there—Students of language please take notice of this queer old-fashioned habit—whether ministers are aware that English girls are less graceful than a horse. The answer to this question, it seems, is that ministers are not aware, but will bring a horse and a girl, and see.

But better still, in any dilemma, of course, we can appeal to the Primate of the Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it is a part of his functions, carried down since Edward the Confessor, to say something soothing, something that, without giving offence, leaves the whole thing—well, this is what he said in this case, that he had yet to know of any English girl drinking gin in what he considered inordinate quantities.

So there you have the press. One wonders, how can the world stand up against this tidal wave of minor annoyances? How can the barriers between the nations, the ramparts that have to be levelled to an open plain of friendship—how can they ever be abandoned if there must always be the need of repelling these invidious attacks?

Then as soon as the press run short of these personal denunciations, the military experts step in with another set of interviews, this time about the character of the next war. To give it the proper thrill of interest they refer to it as the next ‘World War.’ It is understood that everybody will want to get into it on one side or the other. The only difficulty the experts find is with the alignment. That means who fights who. It is one of the most important things about a world war to get it properly ‘aligned,’ because if it’s not it runs out on you after a few years. The last war, it appears, was badly aligned. We ought to have given the Germans the Portuguese and lent them at least some of the Chinese. Properly aligned, it would have been going on still.

Hence the importance of alignment for the next World War. Here for example is, in substance, an interview given recently to the New York press, by Colonel the Honourable Fizzle Bungspark, a member of the British general staff, and, as everybody knows, a son of Lord Angletoad—in fact, so far, nobody has ever doubted it.

The colonel [writes the interviewer] is confident that in the next World War (which may begin in the spring), the most probable alignment is Great Britain, France and the United States against Germany and Russia; but he thinks it might be Great Britain, Russia and Germany against France, the United States and Portugal. On the other hand, the colonel admits that if the Chinese wish to come in it would be scarcely possible to keep them out. The Chinese, he says, have practically reached the level of a Christian nation. Their knowledge of poison gas is as yet a little inferior, but they will rapidly be able to take their place on an honourable footing in the coming contest.

After the sensation over the Colonel has died down a little, there lands in New York a great French Air Expert, and another interview follows, this time not on alignment but on matériel. This is the French word that means what they hit you with.

General le Marquis de Rochambeau LaFayette, director in chief of the French Aerial Forces, was interviewed yesterday as to the prospects of world peace. The General, whose name is Charles Marie Felix Rochambeau LaFayette de Liancourt, belongs to the old ‘noblesse’ of France and is a cultivated French gentleman of the old school, a veteran of seven wars, decorated with the ‘croix de guerre,’ the ‘croix de feu,’ the ‘nom de plume’ and the ‘cri de Paris.’ He thinks the next war will begin or perhaps be preceded by blowing up New York from the air. ‘The skyscrapers and hotels’ he said, ‘will offer an admirable ‘point de mire,’ but he is afraid it will be hard to hit the churches, unless more space is cleared around them. But the public streets and squares will offer plenty of targets.

That’s good! And yet somehow I don’t like this target business! It gives one the jumps. It seems to mean that, in the next war, we, we ourselves, get blown up—right here! Now that’s ridiculous!

The old, old wars were so safe, so far away, so romantic. A hundred years ago an expedition sailed away to God-knows-where. The band played and they went away, and then presently they came back from God-knows-where, looking a little bewhiskered and brown, but they had licked somebody somewhere, and everything was grand! And then war began to get a little nearer and a little nearer and to take a heavier and heavier toll, and now they actually propose to drop the bombs on us. That makes me think it is time to quit the war business.

But that isn’t the whole of it.

We have got a new and first-class implement of war all forged in the new mechanism of publicity. If there is a war, we are going to have the hideous, gloating satisfaction of following, as we can now in unhappy Spain, every stage of slaughter and holocaust—gloating, exulting, with all the worst that is in us, reading, with that kind of half-hidden delight, of the horrors and misfortunes that go with war. In the old times some kind of shield and shelter, some kind of darkness, hung over those black spots. When Saragossa was torn, as Madrid is now, the world knew nothing of it at the moment. When Napoleon’s army froze and suffered in the snow, the world did not see it with television, as it will when the next great army goes under. For now we have got already, or will have for the next war, a hideous commercial instrument of money-making that will sell us the sight of the war, day by day, and agony by agony.

It is not the fault of anyone. What I am trying to say is that humanity has now been caught up by forces for which no single person is to blame—not the capitalist, not the Socialist, not even all together. What the Greeks called Ananke, the fate of man. But whereas the Greek submitted to Ananke and let himself be borne along, like Œdipus, by fate, we have learned a different attitude; and I think we won’t suffer it for ever, but we shall manage, somehow, to bend ourselves into a different direction and alter our fate.

But I am not saying the fault is that of any one person or country or any particular creed. It is a huge collective fault, and with it goes that strange thing ‘publicity’ by which war will be turned into money.

Let us suppose they had had publicity in the wars of the past, that everything came over the radio as it happened. Let us imagine that when Duke William of Normandy went across the Channel to invade England, the radio followed him and could send back the news to a Norman castle, and they could tune in and hear what was happening at Stamford Bridge and Senlac Hill and how the battle was going.

Carry yourselves with me to a Norman castle. It is the castle, let us say, of a Norman knight who has gone with William of Normandy. We are in the castle of Count Guesshard de Discard, one of the companions of William. Count Guesshard has gone, but his wife, Lady Margaret of the Rubber Neck, and her beautiful daughter, Lady Angela of the Angle Eye, are there. They are supposed, by an anachronism, to have a radio there and they are tuning in to try and get some word of what is happening over at the Battle of Hastings.

It is difficult at first. When they try to tune in they strike a Welsh Bard—as you would now. The bards are not like the good; they don’t die young. But after having tried in vain, Lady Margaret and Lady Angela twist the dials on this mediaeval instrument in their bower. (That means something like a stone cow-stable, what the historians call a ‘tapestried bower.’ It is, as I say, like a stone cow-stable with old cloth hung up; no glass windows, and rushes and dirt on the floor.) But by anachronism there is a beautiful radio at the side, to skip ten centuries for them, and thus they tune in; and then the voice of the announcer, sounding just the same a thousand years ago as it does now:

Announcer: Now, folks, this is Senlac Hill, and we’re going to put a real battle on the air for you, and it’s going to be some battle. The principals are Harold, King of England—lift your helmet, Harold—and William, the Dook, or, as some call him, the Duck, of Normandy. Both the boys are much of a size, both trained down to weight, and each has got with him as nice a bunch of knights and archers as you’d see east of Pittsburgh. Umpires are: for Harold, the Reverend Allbald of the Soft Head, Archbishop of Canterbury; for William, Odo the Ten-Spot, Bishop of Bayeux. Side lines, Shorty Sigismund and Count Felix Marie du Pâté de Foie Gras. Referee, King Swatitoff of Sweden, ex-Champion of the Scandinavian League. Battle called at exactly ten a.m. They’re off. The Norman boys make a rush for the hill. Harold’s centre-forwards shoot arrows at them. William leads a rush at the right centre. Attaboy, William! That’s the stuff! Harold’s boys block the rush. Two Norman knights ruled off for interference. William hurls his mace. Forward Pass. Ten-year penalty. Quarter time.

The radio stops.

Lady Margaret: How terrifically exciting! Do you think we are winning?

Lady Angela: It is very hard to tell. I’ve often heard Papa say that in the first quarter of a battle they don’t really get warmed up.

The radio starts.

Announcer: Battle of Senlac. Second Quarter. Change of Ground. Duke William has won the west end. The Normans make a rush against the left centre. Hand-to-hand scrimmage with Harold’s front line. Many knights unhorsed and out of the game. Several men hurt on both sides. Count Guesshard de Discard receives a crack on the bean with a mace.

Lady Angela: Oh, Mamma, Papa got one on the bean.

Lady Margaret (Laughing): He certainly did. I can just see your papa’s face when someone landed him one!

Lady Angela: What happens to you, Mamma, if Papa gets knocked out?

Lady Margaret (Looking at her little steel mirror): I don’t know, but I think Cousin William is to give me to one of his knights.

And if you think that exaggerated, oh, no, that isn’t it. Not at all!

Announcer: Second half of the game—

And just then the radio, even in 1066, suddenly got full of static, and only static, and when they get it going again, the battle is all over and the announcer is saying:

The foul Saxon, Harold, lies dead across the fifty-yard line with his whole centre scrimmage dead round him. Spectators leaving in all directions in great haste. The noble William is everywhere victorious. Norman crowd invading the club house. Number of injured and dead knights being piled up at the side of the field. Among the dead are Count Roger the Sardine, Count Felix Marie du Pâté de Foie Gras, the Seneschal Pilaffe de Volatile and Count Guesshard de Discard.

Lady Angela: Ah, do you hear that, Mamma? Odd’s life, Papa’s killed. That must have been that smack on the bean. I had a notion that Papa would get it, hadn’t you?

Lady Margaret (Picking up the little steel mirror again and adjusting her cap): Oh, I was sure of it. A juggler prophesied it to me last Whitsuntide. I wonder which of the knights Count William will give me to. Isn’t war exciting, darling?

Oh, yes, and still is—still is. But in those days on such a different footing—on such a very different footing—from what it is now.

So here you have, as far as I can give it in that kind of picture, some notion of the two forces between which humanity is torn. Fortunately there are, though less spectacular, enormous forces moving the other way—economic forces, forces which are beginning to insist that the world economically and physically is all one, that the old days when a valley made a nation and a river separated two peoples and the world was broken by its own geography, that that is finished, and that modern power and modern flight and the whispering currents that pass everywhere—those uniting forces and the forces of disunion are locked in a deadly struggle.

There is, I believe, one school of theologians which has pictured human fate from its earliest times as being the prey sought for by two spirits, the one of light, the other of darkness, fighting over humanity as the Greeks and Trojans fought over the body of the dead Patroclus. And if that is true in one form or another, there was never a better illustration of it than in these anxious and critical times in which we are living, in which the bygone forces that made the nations may still drag us into war, in spite of the fact that a Frenchman is not a Frenchman, that he is a man, and an Englishman is a man, and an Irishman a man and a half.

The unity of mankind has powerful allies. Science calls for it. Men of science are compelled to move together. Invention cannot be separated. And behind those forces there goes, in the good sense, athletics—all of that defies national boundaries and tries to build up for us a different kind of world.

Which is going to succeed I do not know, but I do know the duty that is laid upon every one of us to do what best he can to mould opinion, to shape destiny, to be, within our little sphere, blameless for these awful things which still might happen. It almost looks as if we could see over in Europe the handwriting on the wall that means coming disaster. Please Heaven, not. But every step that is taken by the major governments shows how close they know the crisis may perhaps be.

There are no people more sane and steady than those who govern England. With them government is not and never has been a matter of the collective votes of the majority of the people. That sounds a strange statement. That sounds contrary to the plain fact of parliamentary elections. But I repeat it. In England government has never merely represented the majority vote of the people. It has represented something hard to define without being lost in the mazes of philosophy—but a kind of collective wisdom, collective loyalty of a governing class. Those are brutal words, easy to misuse, hard to understand properly—not a tyrant class, but a class of people like Stanley Baldwin, with an infinite sense of responsibility, people to whom office and opposition are all one, and both mean service. It has been my privilege to know some of those men who in the last thirty years have governed England, and I am convinced that there is not in the heart of any one of them any other motive than that of the welfare of all mankind, of Europe and of England. When you see the steps that are being taken even by such a government as that, the fortification of what was once a self-protected island, the air that hums with danger, the sleep that may be broken at any moment, then such a situation calls aloud for sympathy.

Do not think that we can escape it here. Do not think that we can shelter ourselves behind the ocean and look upon this wreckage as destined only to blot the continent of Europe and never to matter to America. If it comes it will spread like a plague, driving across the continents with all the evil winds of disaster behind it. We are as much interested as they. ‘Hodie mihi, cras tibi,’ so wrote the mediaeval monks on the stone coffins of their dead. ‘Mine to-day, yours to-morrow.’ ‘Your fate will be mine and your salvation shall be mine.’

So we must plead unceasingly for an earnest sympathy with Europe, wiping out all the angers of the past, wiping out all the questions of whose are the honour and whose the guilt of the late war, remembering not the brutality, but only the bright pages of the heroism, the golden pages that open in either direction, pages that open as well for our so-called enemies as for ourselves.

We must remember that there are no people better situated than you in the United States and we in Canada. We can show an example of what is to be done for salvation. We do not need for our friendship a pen and ink, a contract, a document, a scrap of paper. We do not need that. We are bound by our hearts. We have long since decided that politically our ways lie separate, but the very fixity of that resolve makes it easier and better and finer for us to let our ways mingle as closely as ever they possibly can. At times the English get worried about the so-called ‘Americanization’ of Canada. They don’t realize that that is the best thing that ever happened for Canada, for the States, for the Empire, for the world at large. It gives us the aspect of one single continent, from the frozen sea to the Rio Grande, bound together as we are by friendship only, mutual agreement and co-operation, and relying only upon the path of peace.

I tell you this: If the world is to be saved, that is the path of salvation in Europe. They may take it; they may not. The sky is heavy with a lurid light threatening to break from the clouds. There is the cool fresh air blowing above. Which can conquer? We don’t know. You and I and all of us if we live a few years will know of wonderful happenings in the world, for the path has got to be made straight or the path will lead over the abyss. The problem cannot wait. It has grown too acute. The world has no time for bungling, or muddling through. That was good enough for the older civilization, but not for us now.

What I have been trying to say is that there is a responsibility, not only on them, but on us, on you in the States and on us in Canada. All the nobler assets of youth and courage and optimism are needed in the struggle. There is room for every one of us to take our part in this coming struggle over the fate of mankind.