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.