The visit was not all strenuous affection. There were quiet backwaters in which His Royal Highness obtained some rest, golfing and dancing. One such moment was when on this day he crossed to the Yacht Club, an idyllic place, on the sandspit that encloses the lagoon.
This club, set in the vividly blue waters of the great lake, is a little gem of beauty with its smooth lawns, pretty buildings and fine trees. It is even something more, for every handful of loam on which the lawns and trees grow was transported from the mainland to make fruitful the arid sand of the spit. The Prince had tea on the lawn, while he watched the scores of brisk little boats that had followed him out and hung about awaiting his return like a genial guard of honour.
There was always dancing in honour of the Prince, and always a great deal of expectation as to who would be the lucky partners. His partners, as I have said, had their photographs published in the papers the next day. Even those who were not so lucky urged their cavaliers to keep as close to him as possible on the ball-room floor, so every inflexion of the Prince could be watched, though not all were so far gone as an adoring young thing in one town (NOT Toronto), who hung on every movement, and who cried to her partner in accents of awe:
"I've heard him speak! I've heard him speak! He says 'Yes' just like an ordinary man. Isn't it wonderful!"
On Tuesday, the 25th, the Yacht Club was the scene of one of the brightest of dances, following a very happy reunion between the Prince and his comrades of the war. Some hundreds of officers of all grades were gathered together by General Gunn, the C.O. of the District, from the many thousands in Ontario, and these entertained the Prince at dinner at the Club. It was a gathering both significant and impressive. Every one of the officers wore not merely the medals of Overseas service, but every one wore a distinction gained on the field.
It was an epitome of Canada's effort in the war. It was a collection of virile young men drawn from the lawyer's office and the farm, from the desk indoors and avocations in the open, from the very law schools and even the University campus. In the big dining-hall, hung with scores of boards in German lettering, trench-signs, directing posts to billets, drinking water and the like, that had been captured by the very men who were then dining, one got a sense of the vivid capacity and alertness that made Canada's contribution to the Empire fighting forces so notable, and more, that will make Canada's contribution to the future of the world so notable.
There was no doubt, too, that, though these self-assured young men are perfectly competent to stand on their own feet in all circumstances, their visit to the Old Country—or, as even the Canadian-born call it, "Home"—has, even apart from the lessons of fighting, been useful to them, and, through them, will be useful to Canada.
"Leaves in England were worth while," one said. "I've come back here with a new sense of values. Canada's a great country, but we are a little in the rough. We can teach you people a good many things, but there are a good many we can learn from you. We haven't any tradition. Oh, not all your traditions are good ones, but many are worth while. You have a more dignified social sense than we have, and a political sense too. And you have a culture we haven't attained yet. You've given us not a standard—we could read that up—but a liking for social life, bigger politics, books and pictures and music, and all that sort of thing that we had missed here—and been quite unaware that we had missed."
And another chimed in:
"That's what we miss in Canada, the theatres and the concerts and the lectures, and the whole boiling of a good time we had in London—the big sense of being Metropolitan that you get in England, and not here. Well, not yet. We were rather prone to the parish-pump attitude before the war, but going over there has given us a bigger outlook. We can see the whole world now, you know. London's a great place—it's an education in the citizenship of the universe."