England, Canada and the Great War

by L. G. Desjardins

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Outrages Are No Reasons.

The failings of human nature, the differences of temper, of the qualities and defects of heart and soul, are such that harmony and good-will amongst men in private life are too often difficult to secure. The Divine precept, so frequently broken, should, however, always rule the relations between man and man. It should, with still more constant application, rule the relations between different races Providentially called to live together on the same soil, under the same Sovereign authority, enjoying the same institutions, the same liberties, protected by the same flag. That the house divided against itself is sure to fall is true of the nation as well as of the home. National and family happiness and prosperity are alike dependent on the feelings of real brotherhood which prevail in both. Any good hearted man appreciates how much kindness of speech, courtesy of dealings, cordiality of manners, contribute to reciprocal good-fellowship, brotherly in the home, inspiring in the daily intercourse of citizens, patriotic in the nation at large. The more a Sovereign State is inhabited by numerous ethnical groups, like the British Empire and the American Republic, the more important it is that the freedom of expressing one's opinion on all matters of public interest should be used with fairness, with respect for those holding different views, with due regard for the feelings which are the natural outcome of racial developments, of cherished recollections, of legitimate hopes.

Such are the principles, I am most happy to say, that I have admired and try to practice in the exercise of my rights as a citizen of the Province where I saw the light of day, of Canada where I have lived and hope to live all my years, of the British Empire whose loyal subject I have been and am determined to remain to my last moment.

How then could I have helped being shocked when I came to read the following lines I translate as follows from page 121 of Mr. Bourassa's pamphlet:—"Yesterday, To-day, To-morrow":—

"Were the French Canadians to persist in their obstination to rot in colonialism and to consider that it is for them the happiest and the most glorious condition of existence, the English Canadians would force them out of it. Our countrymen of the British races have grave defects: they are IGNORANT, PRETENTIOUS, ARROGANT, SHORT-SIGHTED, DOMINEERING. They are, more than ourselves, ROTTEN WITH MERCANTILISM. They seem to have lost some of the best qualities of the English people, to have developed their faults and acquire many of the vices natural to the worst category of Yankees. But they have not, LIKE US, totally ABDICATED the PROUD CHARACTER and the PRIMORDIOUS RIGHTS of the British peoples. When the war is over, they will claim, like the Australians, the New Zealanders, and the Indians (les Hindous), a readjustment of the powers of government."

Thus, in a few lines the Nationalist leader, in appealing to his disordered imagination, has succeeded in slapping, in one single stroke, with dynamical outrages, the faces of the English-speaking Canadians of the three great British races, of our neighbours, the Yankees, and of his own compatriots, the French-Canadians. How could he expect that such vitriolic language would promote, in the Dominion, that harmony of feelings never before so essential as at the very time he was writing that injurious paragraph of his work, surely not intended to help winning the war so full of the greatest consequences, for good or ill, for the World, the British Empire, Canada, and our own Province of Quebec.

So far, Mr. Bourassa, having gone back on the admiration he was wont to profess for England, in his early youth, had reserved all his assaults for the English people. But the heart of man, once under the sway of an unlimited and unsatisfied ambition, is bound to drop to the lowest depths of the extremist's aberration. In the above quotation, he fires his battery of Kruppic dimensions—loaded with poisonous invectives, at the three great British races, English, Scotch and Irish, living in Canada.

Had his charge been intended for the English race alone, he would have been very particular in so saying. But, let there be no mistake about it, he deliberately wrote our countrymen of the British races. Wanting, I suppose, to prove his impartiality, he remembered that the United Kingdom is peopled by three illustrious races represented all over the globe by many millions of worthy sons, everywhere to be found hard at work for the intelligent development of the resources of the countries they live in and are rearing their children. More than four millions of them are Canadians by birth or born in Great Britain. Many more numerous they are in the United States where they form the solid stock upon which the future of the Republic is firmly grounded.

With the same thrust, Mr. Bourassa strikes at the Yankees who, we may hope, have not trembled too much at the blow. He charges them with having infested his poor countrymen of the British races with many of the vices natural to the worst category of "Yankeeism." Kind, cordial, courteous, indeed he was in such a mood of tender sympathies for the Canadian British races and their contagious cousins the Yankees of the most corrupted class!