These views—so says Mr. Bourassa—are to be found in a book entitled: "The Day of the Saxon." If they have been really expressed with the full sense given to them by Mr. Bourassa's translation into French, I cannot say less than that they are most absurd, most extravagant. The Nationalist leader would have proved himself a much more sensible, a wiser man, if, laughing at such senseless notions, he had refrained from quoting those lines for the purpose of telling the French-Canadians that like all non-British races on earth they were doomed to be devoured—flesh and bones—by the voracious Anglo-Saxons bent on swallowing humanity. And to save them from such a cruel fate, he implores them to clamour for Imperial representation with the criminal intent of betraying their trust, and to use the honourable privilege they would be granted to ruin the Empire they would swear to maintain and defend. So far as the political program of General Lea is concerned, we have not yet learned that its benevolent author was doing much in the war to carry it out. If I had the honour to meet the General, being presented, I presume, by Mr. Bourassa, I would ask him, first, when and where he has discovered that England was dominating the world.
I know that there exists a great England holding a large situation on earth. Her Empire extends to almost a fourth of the globe. Her Sovereignty reigns over nearly four hundred million of human beings; a truly beneficient Sovereignty, because it rules according to the wishes, to the opinions of its subjects, managing their own affairs in virtue of the freest political institutions in the whole world.
I know of no England dominating, or even aspiring to dominate, the world. Such an England only exists in the heated imagination of that General Lea and in the minds of all those, like the Nationalist leader, who are, or feign to be, tortured by the bugbear of military Imperialism of the old Roman ironed type.
As long as three-fourths of the earth will remain independent of the British Empire, under numerous sovereignties, England's pretended domination of the world will ever only be an extravagant dream.
Wishing England to continue her domination of the world, General Lea, no doubt to please Mr. Bourassa, was bound to suggest the means to do so. Let us analyze them.
1.—England must make the sacrifice of her political liberties and of those of her Colonies.
2.—She must abolish parliamentary and representative governments.
It is beyond conception that Mr. Bourassa should have for one minute seriously considered such absurd notions.
I would enjoy attending large public meetings in Great Britain, where General Lea would propose to British free men the sacrifice of all their political liberties, to witness the rather warm reception he would be favoured with. I am sure he would have to rush out of the halls much faster than he would have walked in.
Where is the sane man who really believes that, dreaming of a domination of the world by brute force, British free men would consent to do away with their Parliamentary system to transform the whole of the Empire into an armed camp? Such a proposition was sheer madness, a most foolish talk, unworthy of the slightest attention from sensible people. Mr. Bourassa was very wrong in giving it publicity, and very unwise, to say the least, in using it to frighten his French-Canadian compatriots by blandishing before their eyes that ridiculous specimen of the phantom of Imperialism.