Canada and Britain's War Union
By Edward W. Thomson, F.R.S.L., F.R.S.C.
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
Canada's political relation to Great Britain, and, indeed, to all other countries, has been essentially altered by Canada's quite voluntary engagement in the war. Were feudal terms not largely inapplicable, one might aver that the vassal has become the suzerain's ally, political equality connoted.
But, indeed, Canadians were never vassals. They have ever been Britons, whatever their individual origins, retaining the liberties of their political birthright. While in a certain tutelage to their own monarchs' immediate Ministries, they have continually, slowly, consciously, expanded their freedom from such tutelage, substituting for it self-government or rule by their own representatives, without forsaking but rather enhancing their allegiance to the common Crown. This has long been the symbol of their self-government, even as it is to old country kinsmen the symbol of rule by themselves.
The alteration manifested by Canada's active, voluntary engagement in the European war is the change from Canadians holding, as they formerly did, that Great Britain was bound to defend Canada, while Canadians were not bound to defend Great Britain outside Canada. The "dependency" has not been now dragged in; it acted as an independency; it recognized its participation with Great Britain in a common danger; it proceeded quite voluntarily, quite independently, to recruit, organize, dispatch, and maintain large forces for the common cause. Canada's course has become that of a partner in respect of acceptance of risks and of contribution to expenses.
This partner has no formally specified share in gains, or in authority, or in future policy of the concern. Canada has no obvious, distinct, admitted way or voice as to the conduct of war or making of peace. She appears, with the other self-governing Dominions of the Crown, as an ally having no vote in settlements, none of the prerogatives of an ally. Hence some observers in Great Britain, in Canada, in other realms of the Crown contend that the old, expressed relations between Great Britain, Canada, and the other Dominions must inevitably be extensively changed formally as well as actually in consequence of the war.
Some say imperial federation cannot but ensue. Others argue that formal independence must arrive if such federation come not speedily. Others contend for an Empire League of sister States. Nobody ventures to mention what was often talked publicly by Canadians from thirty to fifty years ago, and later by Goldwin Smith, viz., Canada's entrance to the United States as a new tier of sovereign States. The idea of severance from Great Britain has vanished. Discussion of the other alternatives is not inactive, but it is forced. It engages the quidnuncs. They are talkers who must say something for the delight of hearing themselves; or they are writers who live under the exigency of needing to get "something different" daily into print. They are mostly either "Jingoes" or Centralizationists, as contra to Nationalists or Decentralizationists, long-standing opponents.
Each set perceives their notions liable to be profoundly affected by Canada's fighting in Europe. Each affects belief that their own political designs cannot but be thereby served; each is afflicted with qualms of doubt. They alike appreciate the factors that make for their opponent's cause. Both know the strength of popular attachment to Great Britain; both know the traditional and inbred loathing of the industrious masses for the horrible bloodshed and insensate waste of treasure in war. Both sets balance inwardly the chances that sentiments seemingly irreconcilable and about equally respectable may, after the war, urge Canadians either to draw politically closer to their world-scattered kin, or to cut ligaments that might pull them again and again, time without end, into the immemorial European shambles.
But is the Canadian public excitedly interested in the discussion? Not at all. Spokesmen and penmen of the two contentious factions are victimized by their own perfervid imaginations. The electorate, the masses, are not so swayed. The Canadian people, essentially British no matter what their origins, are mainly, like all English-speaking democracies, of straight, primitive, uncomplicated emotions, and of essentially conservative mind. They "plug" along. The hour and the day hold their attention. It is given to the necessary private works of the moment, as to the necessary public conduct of the time.
They did not, as a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada's engagement in the war. Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable. They applauded seriously the country's being "put in for it" by agreement of the two sets of party politicians, and without any direct consultation of the electorate in this, the most important departure Canada ever made, because prompt action seemed the only way, and time was lacking for debate about what seemed the next thing that had to be done. In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches.
When the patriots climbed up to them, and told them with oratory that they now had a Prince who wore a blue coat and white breeches, they grasped their rifles, and kissed wife and children, and went down the mountain and offered their lives in defense of the white coat and the dear old red breeches.
But did they forsake their relish of and devotion to their customary, legendary Tyrolese liberties? No more will the Canadian masses, by reason of their hearty participation in the war, incline to yield jot or tittle of their usual, long-struggled-for, gradually acquired, valuable and valued British self-governing rights. Can the Jingoes or Centralizationists scare them backward? Or the Decentralizationists or Separatists hurry them forward? Won't they just continue to "plug along" as their forefathers did in the old country and in the new, gaining a bit more freedom to do well or ill at their own collective choice—that is, if the war result "as usual" in British security, according to confident British expectation.
Such is the Canadian political situation. It has been essentially similar any time within living memory. The people approve in politics what they feel, instinctively, to be the profitable or the decent and reasonable necessary next thing to do. Which signifies that those controversialists are probably wrong who conceive that a result of the war, if it be a win for the Allies, will cause any great formal change in Canada's political relation to Great Britain.
The truly valuable change in such relations is already secured; it cannot but become more notably established by future discussion; it is and will be a change by reason of greatly increased influence on Great Britain by Canada and the other Dominions. And it appears highly probable that such inevitable change in influence or weight of the new countries is sufficient for all sentiments concerned, and for all useful purposes on behalf of which formal changes are advocated by doctrinaires and idealists.
The British peoples have acquired by long practice in very various politics a way of making existing arrangements "do" with some slight patching. They are instinctively seized of the truth of Edmund Burke's maxim, "Innovation is not improvement." They have "muddled along" into precisely the institutions that suit any exigency, their sanest political philosophers recognizing that the exigency must always be most amenable to the most flexible system.
It is because the existing arrangements between London and the several Dominion capitals don't suit logicians that they do suit experienced statesmen pretty well. Because these institutions can be patched as occasion may require, they are retained for patching on occasion. Because the loose, go-as-you-please organization of the so-called "empire" has revealed almost incredible unity of sentiment and purpose, practiced statesmen regard it as a prodigious success. They are mighty shy of affiliating with any of the well-meaning doctrinaires who have been explaining any time within the last century that the system is essentially incoherent and absurd and urgently needs profound change with doctrinaire improvements.
Sir Robert Borden, for instance. Some days ago he most amiably gave me a little private talk on these matters, of course on the tacit understanding that he was not to be "interviewed" as for close reporting of his informal sentences. He was, by the way, apparently in robust health, as if, like Mr. Asquith, of a temperament to flourish under the heaviest responsibilities ever laid on a Prime Minister in his own country. No statesman could be of aspect and utterance less hurried, nor more pleasant, lucid, cautious, disposed to give a friendly caller large and accurate information briefly, while disclosing nothing at variance with or unfindable in his published speeches. Of some of them he repeated apposite slices; to others he referred for further enlightenment as to his views on imperial federation. Really he was neither secretive nor newly informative. The Premier of Canada at any time is governed, much as I have endeavored to show how the electors are, by that natural, instinctive course of the general loyal Canadian mind, which constitutes "the situation" and controls Governmental proceedings on behalf of the public.
Well meaning persons who allege Sir Robert to have either favored or disfavored imperial federation have been inaccurate. Precisely what imperial federation may be nobody knows, for the simple and sufficient reason that nobody has ever sketched or elaborated a scheme in that regard which appeared or appears desirable as a change from the all-compelling situation. What has never been adopted as desirable cannot be termed practicable in statesmen's language. To declare an untried scheme impracticable might be an error of rashness.
The idea of federating the empire has long attracted Sir Robert, with many other admirable Canadians and Britons, since it connotes or involves the concept of British Union for all worthy and necessary purposes, including maintenance of local autonomy or self-government, surely a most praiseworthy design. Discussion of that idea is unlikely to be harmful; it may be useful; something may come of it that may seem desirable and practicable to substantially all interests and people concerned. A consummation devoutly to be wished, but not to be rushed! One point, frequently specified in Sir Robert's public speeches, was stated as follows in a recent report, pamphleted for distribution by his own side:
It is impossible to believe that the existing status, so far as it concerns the control of foreign policy and extra-imperial relations, can remain as it is today. All are conscious of the complexity of the problem thus presented; and no one need despair of a satisfactory solution, and no one can doubt the profound influence which the tremendous events of the past few months and of those in the immediate future must exercise upon one of the most interesting and far-reaching questions ever presented for the consideration of statesmen.
There Sir Robert was recommending no particular solution. A little earlier in the same speech he illustrated the deep sense of all experienced British statesmen that there never is or can be in the British system any final solution of any grave problem, the vital essence of the system being flux and change to suit ever-changing circumstance.
In so far as this empire may be said to possess a Constitution, it is of modern growth and is still in the stage of development. One can hardly conceive that it will ever distinctly emerge from that state or attain a status in which constitutional development is no longer to be anticipated. Indeed, the genius of the British people and all our past history lead us to believe the contrary. The steps in advance have been usually gradual and always practical; and they have been taken on instinct rather than upon any carefully considered theory.
YUAN SHIH-KAI—President of the Chinese Republic.—
(Photo by Rio V. De Sieux.)
PRINCE VON BUELOW—German Ambassador to Italy.
Which was admonition at once of the Centralizationists and their opponents, the Nationalists.
Whatever alteration of existing British inter-arrangements may come after the war will be done on instinct in view of circumstances that cannot now be foreseen. Wherefore clamorers for this or that, their favorite scheme, are now inopportunists. Hence they are neglected by the public as unimpressive, futile wasters of breath or ink. Indeed Canada, Great Britain, the whole race of mankind are now swept on the crest of a huge wave of Fate. When it casts them ashore, recedes, leaves men to consider what may best be done for the future, then will have come the time to rearrange political fabrics, if need be. Then Sir Robert Borden will probably continue in his often clearly specified opinion that Canada, if remaining liable as now to be drawn into Great Britain's more perilous wars—a liability which must ever urge Canada to strong participation in order that the peril may be the sooner ended—ought to have a share in controlling Great Britain's foreign policy. Which sharing Mr. Asquith declared last year impracticable, in that sense inadmissible.
Westminster must retain freedom to move, act, strike quickly. Her course toward Germany had to be decided last August within a few hours. Obviously her freedom, her power for promptitude would be hindered in proportion to need for such consultation with and approval by councilors of many distant countries as is presupposed by advocates of imperial federation. Why establish control by cumbersome, superfluous machinery when the war has made it clear as the sun at high noon that the essential desideratum, British Union, exists now? All the notable communities of the King's realms have demonstrated that they are in the mind, the condition of a voluntary empire. What more can be desired save by such as desire old country domination of all the concerned countries, and who really long for a formal and subservient Empire?
Sir Richard Jebb, a deep student of the Empire problem, declared clearly last November the meaning of that general voluntary British war union which is a wonder of mankind, and in the course to teach a profound, general political lesson. He wrote:
That the war will in any event change the external relations is evident. But why, if we win, should it change the political relations between the parts, except to the extent of encouraging us to conserve and develop the existing system which has given so signal an example of effective imperial unity in time of need? Continually talking of imperial unity, we fail to recognize it when we have got it. There is never going to be a moment when one might say "Yesterday we were not united; today the Grand Act (of Imperial Federation understood) has been signed; henceforth we are united."
The cult of the Grand Act is a snare and a delusion. Whatever may happen hereafter—even the Grand Act itself—posterity is likely to look back upon August, 1914, as the moment when the British Empire reached the zenith of its unity. Let us remember that the existing system is not stationary, though its principle (voluntary union) may be final. It has been developing steadily since 1902.
The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies, which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until 1910. The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to reside in London should have free and constant access to the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken advantage of, even by Australia.
But the development is all true to principle. What principle? Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion. In war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do or not to do. But we have invoked naval and military co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)
Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished from the German principle of a centralized empire organized primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so many of our prophets predicted? On the contrary, it has alone saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting unrestricted military aid from each part. Why change it for something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?
Sir Richard Jebb's sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden's oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or liability to war. This liability really compels them to engage with all their strength, lest they comfort an enemy by abstention, or by confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read as disapproval of Britain's course, if the war were one of magnitude endangering her. A system more powerfully requiring Great Britain to take heed that her quarrel be just, lest she be not thrice armed by approving children, can scarcely be imagined.
On this matter I have had the pleasure and benefit, during the last twelve years, of talking with Sir Wilfrid Laurier often. In the quoted Jebb view he agreed closely when I saw him a few days ago. He remarked, with special regard to this article for THE NEW YORK TIMES, that his point of insistence at the Imperial Conferences of 1902, 1907, 1911, and on all proper occasions, has been that local autonomy—that is, complete self-government for each of the Dominions—is not only consistent with British unity but necessary thereto as promoting and conserving that unity.
When Mr. Asquith's denial of the practicability of giving the Dominions a direct share in control of Great Britain's foreign policy is considered, the Jebb-Laurier view would appear one to which Sir Robert Borden, cautious statesman, must be led by recognition that potent influence on foreign policy cannot but come to Dominions energetically providing at once for their own defense and for their power to aid Great Britain all along the line.
As to imperial federation, Sir Wilfrid remarked that he has ever been openly attracted by that aspiration toward permanent British union, on which advocacy of the vague project has ever been bottomed. He is, as he said to me, and as all his long series of political actions have manifested, British in heart and way of political thinking, as indeed substantially all his French-Canadian compatriots are. British liberality, not to say liberalism, has attached them to the British system as firmly as any community originating from the United Kingdom. It was a French-Canadian statesman who asserted, some fifty years ago, when many British-Canadians seemed tending toward union with the United States, "The last shot fired in Canada for British connection will be from a French-Canadian." That was before the civil war abolished slavery.
But, even as the Britishism of Old Country liberals is strongly tinctured by devotion to ideals which Americans are wont to regard as theirs—ideals making for settled peace, industry, the uplift of the "common people," fair room and reward for those abilities which conspicuously serve the general welfare—so Sir Wilfrid and his compatriots acknowledge their Britishism to be acutely conscious of political kinship with the American people. The French-Canadian yearning, like that of many Canadians of British origin, is rather for English-speaking union—a union of at least thorough understanding and common designs with the American people—than for the narrower exclusive British union sought by Canadian imperial federationists.
Sir Wilfrid said, in effect, (I do not profess to report his very words,) that federation of those British communities widely separated by geography, but alike in race, language, laws, principles, has always attracted him as a project of excellent intentions. It is at worst a noble dream. That dream has become less impracticable than it was formerly, he thinks, by reason of the essential diminution of the world, diminution of distances and of time by latter-day inventions.
Against the idea of general representation in a central Parliament at London, Sir Wilfrid pointed out that Edmund Burke objected "opposuit natura"—nature forbade it. The wisest of political philosophers could not foresee the telegraph, wireless, steam, airships. These have made a useful central imperial Parliament at least conceivable. Could it be more useful than the advisory council, or Imperial Conference which has become quadrennial, and might possibly become annual? That is matter for discussion. Sir Wilfrid said that such is the political genius of the British race that he would be rash who alleged any design impracticable toward which the race may tend so generally as to put it under discussion for arrangement of details. Conservation of local self-government, prime essential to agreement for union on common purposes, might prove reconcilable with federated defense.
But there is, to Sir Wilfrid's way of thinking, one large objection against now attempting imperial federation. Its agitators contemplate a scheme immense, yet not sufficiently inclusive. They do not contemplate English-speaking solidarity. They purpose leaving out the majority of English-speakers—the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil Rhodes, a chief propagandist of their main design. It is true that the idea of getting Americans to participate in any formal union with all the rest of their brethren by race and tongue seems now impractical. But time works wonders. Mr. Gladstone foresaw the United States a people of six hundred comfortable millions, living in union before the end of the next century. The hegemony of the English-speaking nations seems likely to be within attainment by that one of them which appears destined to become far the most powerful of all in numbers, in wealth, and in security of environment. Time may show to our successors in this world some effective method of establishing agreements amounting to that solidarity for English-speaking action which has been acclaimed as existent for English-speaking thinking by a mind so eminently reasonable as that of Lord Haldane.
It would be hasty, thinks Sir Wilfrid, and it might be injurious for the British countries to move toward any sort of formal union ostensibly tending to set them collectively apart from the United States. Give great beneficent ideas time to develop. Britons can well afford to take their time, since the war has shown existent among them an almost perfect union of sentiment and purpose. And this, apparently, with the blessed effect of enhancing general American good-will to Britons. From so much good understanding more may ensue, Sir Wilfrid concluded.
Such Canadians as hold Edmund Burke to have been a spokesman of consummate political wisdom are apt to regard the busy stir of doctrinaires, who scream for closer political junction of the British peoples, even as Burke regarded the hurry of some of the same kidney in his time. Resolute to bind the thirteen colonies forever to England, they proceeded to offend, outrage, and drive those colonies to independence. Be it remembered that these colonies had contributed so loyally, so liberally to England's armaments and wars that grateful London Parliaments had insisted on voting back to them the subsidies they had granted, holding the contributions too generous. To later proposals of foolish henchmen of George III., proposals that the colonies, since they had revealed themselves as strong and rich, should be dragged into some formal political subordination by which, as by latter-day Imperial Federation, they might be involuntarily mustered and taxed for imperial purposes, Burke said:
Our hold on the colonies is the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your Government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance....
As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows on every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.
This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly.... Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, ... your letters of office and your instructions and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even to the minutest member.
And the doctrinaires of Centralization, vociferating their fad of Imperial Federation, would have that Constitution, in the moment of its supreme triumph for unity, cast away! Cast away for a new and written one by which Great Britain and all her children alike would chain themselves together! Well may practical statesmen view the doctrinaires with some disdain, not unmindful of Burke's immortal scorn of such formalists:
"A sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. To men truly initiated and rightly taught, those ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together."