Federation, which shall bind the whole British Empire into such a world federation as now holds the provinces of the Dominion? Twenty years ago, if you had asked that, the answer might have been "Yes." Canada was in the dark financially and did not see her way out. If only the Chamberlain scheme of a tariff against the world, free trade within the empire, could have evolved into practical politics, Canada for purely practical reasons would have welcomed Imperial Federation. It would have given her exports a wonderful outlet. But to-day Imperial Federation is a deader issue in Canada than reciprocity with the United States. No more books are written about it. No one speaks of it. No one wants it. No one has time for it. The changed attitude of mind is well illustrated by an incident on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, one day.

A Cabinet Minister was walking along the terrace above the river talking to a prominent public man of England.

"How about Imperial Federation?" asked the Englishman. "Do you want it?"

The Canadian statesman did not answer at once. He pointed across the Ottawa, where the blue shimmering Laurentians seem to recede and melt into a domain of infinitude. "Why should we want Imperial Federation?" he answered. "We have an empire the size of Europe, whose problems we must work out. Why should Canadians go to Westminster to legislate on a deceased wife's sister's bills and Welsh disestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit to plunder the fit?"

It will be noticed that his answer had none of that flunkeyism to which Goldwin Smith used to ascribe much of Canadian pro-loyalty. Rather was there a grave recognition of the colossal burden of helping a nation the area of Europe to work out her destiny in wisdom and in integrity and in the certainty that is built up only from rock bottom basis of fact.

Has flunkeyism any part in the pro-loyalty of Canada? Goldwin Smith thought it had, and we all know Canadians whose swelling lip-loyalty is a sort of Gargantuan thunder. It may be observed, parenthetically, those Canadians are not the personages who receive recognition from England.

"Sorry, Your Royal Highness, sorry; but Canada is becoming horribly contaminated by Americanizing influences," apologized a pro-loyalist of the lip-flunkey variety to the Duke of Connaught shortly after that scion of royalty came to Canada as Governor.

The Duke of Connaught turned and looked the fussy lip-loyalist over.
"What's good enough for Americans is good enough for me," he said.

An instance of the absence of flunkeyism from the Dominion's loyalty to the Mother Country occurred during the visit of the present King as Prince of Wales to the Canadian Northwest a few years ago. The royal train had arrived at some little western place, where a contingent of the Mounted Police was to act as escort for the Prince's entourage. The train had barely pulled in when a fussy little long-coat-tailed secretary flew John-Gilpin fashion across the station platform to a khaki trooper of the Mounted Police.

"His Royal Highness has arrived! His Royal Highness has arrived," gasped the little secretary, almost apoplectic with self-importance. "Come and help to get the baggage off—"

"You go to ——," answered the khaki-uniformed trooper, aiming a tobacco wad that flew past the little secretary's ear. "Get the baggage off yourself! We're not here as porters. We're here to execute orders and we don't take 'em from little damphool fussies like you."

Yet that trooper was of the company that made the Strathcona Horse famous in South Africa—famous for such daring abandon in their charges that the men could hardly be held within bounds of official orders. He is of the very class of men who have forsaken gainful occupations in the West to clamor a hundred-thousand strong for the privilege of fighting to the last ditch for the empire under the rain of death from German fire.

"How can Canadians be loyal to a system of government that acknowledges some fat king sitting on a throne chair like a mummy as ruler?" demanded an American woman of a Canadian man.

"Well," answered the Canadian, "I don't know that any 'fat king' was ever quite so fat as a gentleman named Mammon who plays a pretty big part in the government of all republics." He drew a five-dollar bill from his pocket. "As a piece of paper that is utterly worthless," he explained. "It isn't even good wrapping paper. It's a promise to pay—to deliver the goods, that gives it value. It's what the system of government stands for, that rouses support—not this, that, or the other man—"

"But what does it stand for?" interrupted the American; and the Canadian couldn't answer. It roused and held his loyalty as if of family ties. Yet he could not define it.

He might have explained that Canada has had a system of justice since 1837 never truckled to nor trafficked in, but he knew in his heart that the loyalty was to a something deeper than that. He knew that many republics—Switzerland, for instance—have as impartial a system of justice. He might have descanted on the British North America Act being to Canada what the Constitution is to the United States, only more elastic, more susceptible to growth and changing conditions; but he knew that the Constitution was what it was owing to this other principle of which law and justice were but the visible formula. He might easily have dilated on excellent features of the Canadian parliamentary system different from the United States or Germany. For instance, no party can hold office one day after it lacks the support of a majority vote. It must resign reins to the other party, or go to the country for re-election. Or he might have pointed to the very excellent feature of Cabinet Ministers sitting in the House and being directly responsible to Commons and Senate for the management of their departments to the expenditure of a farthing. A Cabinet member who may be quizzed to-day, to-morrow, every day in the week except Sunday, on the management of affairs under him can never take refuge in ambiguous silence or behind the skirts of his chief, as secretaries delinquent have frequently taken refuge behind the spotless reputation of a too-confiding President. But the Canadian explained none of these things. He knew that these things were only the outward and visible formula of the principle to which he was loyal.

III

A few years ago the mistake would have been impossible; for there was, up to 1900, practically no movement of settlers from the British Isles to Canada; but to-day with an enormous in-rush of British colonists to the Dominion, a superficial observer might ascribe the loyalty to the ties of blood—to the fact that between 1900 and 1911, 685,067 British colonists flocked to Canada. Not counting colossal investments of British capital, there are to-day easily a million Britishers living on and drawing their sustenance from the soil of Canada. And yet, however unpalatable and ungracious the fact may be to Englishmen, the ties of blood have little to do with the bond that holds Canada to England. This statement will arouse protest from a certain section of Canadians; but those same Canadians know there are hundreds—yes, thousands—of mercantile houses in the Dominion where employers practically put up the sign—"No Englishman need apply."

"I've come to the point," said a wholesale hardware man of a Canadian city, "where I won't employ a man if he has a cockney accent. I've tried it hundreds of times, and it has always ended the same way. I have to break a cockney's neck before I can convince him that I know the way I want things done, and they have to be done that way. He is so sure I am 'ownley a demmed