As Others See Us: Being the Diary of a Canadian Debutante

“Oh! the glory of it—to rescue the man I loved.” (See page 298)
Copyright, Canada, 1915, By
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED
MY MOST PATIENT CRITIC
The purpose of this story is to form some impression of salient facts and tendencies in Canadian life, and to show its strength, and through its strength, its weakness. So I planned before the gods ruled for war, and the soldiers began to write history with the sword which, despite Lytton, is proved infinitely mightier than the pen.
However, here is the book, and I hope the reader will not be sorry to meet again old friends. Elsie has—though she does not intend it—a serious purpose.
The English have never truly understood the Colonial.
In May of last year (1914) a writer in the Times said that he had lived in Canada for a number of years, and was satisfied that Canada was becoming Americanized, because the Canadian talked with an American accent. It was possible that what he saw and regarded with alarm is what I have here drawn in gentle satire. Society is our bane; and a new society is certain to be, in many respects, intolerable. The craze for, and hunt after, society is not limited to any country; it is a world-wide weakness. The Snob is—as Thackeray showed us—ubiquitous.
As to my references to the Spread-Eagle citizens of the United States, I have had access to two books, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, by John H. Stark, Boston, published by himself, and The True History of the American Revolution, by Sydney George Fisher, (Lippincott). These are remarkable books; and a knowledge of the contents of either would go far to enable an Englishman to measure the Canadian’s attitude towards the United States. The story these books tell parallels that set forth in the press, as shown by the onslaught of German hordes into Belgium. The outstanding difference is that whereas the Germans cry “Kultur” the Yankees yelled “Liberty.” The Archives of the United States tell of 30,000 cases of outrage against the Loyalists which, I fancy, is a greater number than can be laid at the door of the Huns.