standard of efficiency which it subsequently reached. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and the corps was in excellent form when the war was declared in August, 1914. It was the first to volunteer as a unit for Overseas service.

CHAPTER IIIToC

THE NEWER COLONIAL POLICY

"I suppose now that Great Britain has declared war on Germany, Canada will throw in her lot with the United States," so laughingly spoke an American friend that I met the day Great Britain declared war on Germany.

"Not a bit of it," I said. "Before the week is over you will hear the drums beating and see recruits foregathering here. Canada is at war as well as Great Britain."

"But won't you have difficulties with Quebec?"

"Nothing of the kind. Depend upon it, the last gun in favor of British connection in Canada will, if necessary, be fired by a French-Canadian. They marry young and may be a trifle slow in volunteering on that account. It requires a great effort for a man to tear himself away from a young, helpless wife and a large small family, but they come of good fighting stock, and when it comes to war, blood will tell."

"Well, you can depend on the Monroe-doctrine anyway."

"Yes, we believe in the Monroe-doctrine just the same as you do. We are going to fight for it on the Plains of Flanders."

"But you don't mean that Canada is going to take an active part in the war?"

"Certainly."

"Well, nobody ever thought you would."

In this he was expressing the traditional view of Colonial connection. At the time of the break with the American colonies, Turgot, the great French economist, coined a phrase which has been accepted by the chancelleries of Europe as a truism: "Colonies are like fruit, when they become ripe they drop from the parent stem."

When Germany decided to cross the Meuse into Belgium the Emperor had been assured by his foreign office that Great Britain would not take part in the war. There were the disturbing questions of Home Rule for Ireland, Socialism and anti-Militarism, and the Colonies had grown in wealth and population to such an extent that they were ready to drop from the parent stem if ever they would do so. Would Great Britain risk civil war at home and the loss of her Colonies abroad in order to vindicate her pledge given years before, to keep inviolate the frontiers of Belgium? The answer was the prompt declaration of war on Germany, the cessation of political warfare at home, abroad the splendid enthusiasm of the Colonies with offers of men and money.

Previous to the break with the American Colonies, Great Britain had adopted a colonial policy very much on what we would call Imperial lines. The Navigation Laws of Cromwell gave her virtually command of all trade by sea, protective tariffs and bounties built up inter-Imperial and home trade.

At the end of the Seven Years' War, the Empire, judged from the world's standard, was far greater than it is now. The Colonies were vaster and comparatively more powerful. The general impression now is that Britain's Colonies in America were in those days managed the same as Germany managed her African Colonies, that they were oppressed and had nothing to say about how they were governed and that the mother country played the part of a despot. Such was not the case. The constitutions of the American Provinces were most democratic, more so than many colonial constitutions of to-day. All the provinces in America possessed a parliament elected by the people, and three of them, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, elected an upper House or Senate. Rhode Island and Connecticut elected their own Governors, and these two provinces, along with Maryland, could enact laws without the veto or interference of British legislators or the Crown. In 1762 Great Britain had 337,000 men under arms, and of these over 25,000 were Colonials from America. Fifteen thousand New England seamen volunteered for the Spanish War, and during the Seven Years' War the Colonials manned over 400 privateers or ships of war, and the State of Pennsylvania spent £440,000, a great sum of money in those days, for military purposes.

With the Colonies so loyal and so willing to assist Great Britain in time of trouble and danger, how was it that in a decade the Empire was shattered and the major portion of the Colonies were busy building up a nation of their own? At this distance of time it is still hard to view the question dispassionately.

Who was responsible for this great criminal folly?

Was it some individual?

Was it the old Colonial policy?

Or, was it petty parish politics?

The trend of political thought in the Colonies has generally been the antithesis of political thought in Great Britain. Colonial thought has always been an enigma to the British. Of recent years it has been both disturbing and confusing. The Colonial, who, with his own eyes, within the span of a few years in his own country, views the transition of a bit of landscape from barbarism to civilization, the hunter giving way to the shepherd, the herder to the farmer, cities and towns springing up over night with factories and banking established in a few months, seldom arrives at the same political conclusion as the theorist who tries to conjure up the genesis of political economy from books and musty documents. His is the school of hard experience, which teaches lessons that fine-spun theories cannot upset. It is so with his Colonial theories of economics and government. The dead weight of tradition does not hang around his neck where State affairs are concerned and precedent only counts when it is right and just.

Governor Pownall, of New Jersey, immediately previous to the time of the Revolutionary war, wrote a book, entitled: "The Administration of the British Colonies." In this work he pointed out the necessity of closer political union between the Colonies and the mother country; in fact, he outlined an Imperial constitution. He pointed out that there had always existed two lines of thought among English-speaking people. One favored unity, centralization, Imperialism, the other disunion, or individualism, claiming that in the absolute independence of each small unit of the Empire rested liberty and freedom. This struggle is still on.