them. I think it is fair to say that Mr. Ewart and Mr. Bourassa belong to that school, and perhaps Mr. Walsh who has written and circulated the "Moccasin Prints." The other members of this school are Co-operationists who think that co-operation is the only means of carrying on the British Empire and that every other creed is dangerous. I should include Dr. Macdonald of The Globe among this number.

The Federationists again are divided into two sections. It is hard to find names for them. The first are cautious, slow-going Federationists, people who say, "Of course, in the long run you must have some kind of federation, but you must approach it very slowly." I venture myself to put Sir Wilfrid Laurier in that category, largely as a result of his two speeches on the Naval Bill, in both of which he was careful to say that federation was a magnificent idea but could not be carried out until Canada had a larger population. I sometimes fear that in his case "Hope deferred maketh the heart"-glad, not "sick." Still, in spite of that, he is, I think, at heart quite widely different from many of his followers, one of the slow-going, cautious Federationists, of whom there are a great many.

Lastly we come to the other division of Federationists. They are hard to name, but I venture to call them, -though I admit the roughness of the name-the "Nowor-never Federationists" or the "Ready-to-wear Federationists," people who feel very strongly that the Empire can only be kept together by a common government, and who say, "Here is the Common Government now ready, let us enter it and keep it going from this time on." And there are a great many of these probably in this company.

These are the divisions, as I see them at present, of the Imperial Problem. I cannot analyse them any further. The broad division is that division between those who say that there must never be a power above the Dominion Parliaments, and those who say, on the other hand, there must, whether in the long run or now, be a power above the Dominion Parliaments for common purposes. That is the rough division. I do not think that

at this moment, certainly not in the time at our disposal, we can discuss the merits of these two classes. I like Co-operation; many of us do. It would be delightful to have all freedom and all authority together. But the difficulty about Co-operation is the obvious one, that it may not work. How are you going to carry on five separate independent states and all these dependencies, and where is the money going to come from? Is it going to be there when it is wanted? What is the position of the dependencies to be? This is all very difficult, and I do not think that those who talk about the galaxy of nations understand the difficulties.

The strongest argument against the Co-operationist school was made by Sir Wilfrid Laurier when in the first speech on the Naval Bill he said that co-operation on such a subject as foreign policy-I am not using his exact words, but I think this is his meaning-would not be possible, that Sir Edward Grey who had to decide from hour to hour, from moment to moment, upon the policy of the Empire, could not be expected, could not be asked to consult New Zealand, and Canada, and Australia beforehand. You must have some responsible body or some responsible statesman to take charge. That is my opinion, but I do not think we are called upon to settle the question to-day, but we are called upon to consider it.

It will bring us to the larger problem underneath all this discussion about defence, the real Imperial problem at the moment. Probably some of you have thought of it, and have made up your minds. We have to ascertain if possible whether we have any interests throughout the Empire which are sufficient in quantity and in importance to make it worth while to keep the Empire together. I believe that if we persuade ourselves of that, if we do persuade ourselves of that, and I am not quarrelling with anybody who cannot,-if we persuade ourselves that there are common interests greater than the separate interests, then these constitutional difficulties will adjust themselves. If there are common interests, they will probably end in a common government. It is hard to say that at present. It may be hard to convince

Canadians of that at present. Still I think we can satisfy ourselves as to whether there are common interests in the Empire greater than the interests which might keep us apart. There is, for example, in a great country like the United States at times a divergency of interest between East and West; possibly the same may be so in Canada. My only contention in regard to the United States and Canada is that the common interests are greater than the separate interests, and that is true of any state that holds together. That is all we have to decide really, at bottom, about the British Empire-are the common interests greater than any separate interests which exist at present, or any that are likely to arise? We cannot face that problem frankly-and I think it is a thing for Canadians to settle for themselves—we shall not be able to settle that unless we clear the ground; (and here I come perhaps more to my task of inoculation) unless we clear the ground of a few arguments which are familiar enough, but which have done quite a good deal to obstruct the subject.

These arguments fall, I think, into two divisions. I am trying to make my divisions very obvious, because the subject is complex. You have frequently heard it said that Great Britain has always betrayed the interests of Canada, and that she is not considering them now particularly. This was a main point in Mr. Bourassa's speech. She had framed her foreign policy with regard to Great Britain, not with regard to Canada. Well, of course, that argument reflects a kind of temper. Some one has noticed that the next best thing to having a good cause is to have a good grievance, and there is a great deal in it. That is an answer to some of this argument, but there are several other answers; in the first place, a great many of these things are not true at all, which is a simple answer. The whole argument has been built up on the false reading of history leading up to the Ashburton Treaty, but in these few moments we cannot go into that subject. Still, while there is a great deal to be said on the other side even as regards the history, the details, there are even better answers. Mistakes, I think, have been made by the administrators of the Em

pire in the past, and in foreign policy, leading to wars, but who would refuse to admit that the administrators of the Empire were doing their very best in the interest of the Empire? I do not think that they were considering Canada primarily. I do not think we could expect that. The great majority of Canadians were not here when these difficulties arose. I believe it can be shown that British statesmen, with some mistakes, of course, mistakes are inevitable—I will not deny that some mistakes have happened-have done their best consistently for the Empire, and have tried to do their best, and that is all you can say. We are not called upon here to justify or explain the religious intolerance of the sixteenth century, or of earlier centuries, or anything of that kind. To bother with these things is to create an unhistorical atmosphere. As President Wilson said the other day in a speech, “We must deal with the facts of to-day, not with the facts of any other day." So, I believe it is a wrong attitude to take to bring up against the men of to-day, or the system of to-day, the faults and mistakes of the past. It is unhistorical, it is an unreal method of argument. You will always have inside the British Empire, as in all other organizations, mixtures of good and evil, but both in its past and in its present I think the good overbalances the evil, and that is as much as any one can say. You cannot take the Empire without the mixture. Some people want the Empire pasteurized or fumigated. It is out of the question. You must take it as a great mixed institution. We should not be put off by these small racial antipathies. I refuse myself to be put outside the British Empire by the English. There is no reason why any of us who are not English should allow ourselves to be put out. The institution is too big to be governed with a thought to these antipathies and prejudices. So, I think we may pretty well dismiss a good many of these grievances such as those of Mr. Ewart, which are sometimes repeated by Mr. Bourassa. They belong rather to the same school. It is much as if they threatened to leave Toronto because they were not asked to dinner by the Mayor every week. That sort of attitude does not get you very far.

It is not as worthy an objection as another one which is very much deeper in many Canadian minds, and one with which I myself have a great deal of sympathy, and that is that Canada's history has been a long development of self-government-a very familiar argument this -that Canadians have gradually taken over one department after another, and to think of doing anything else would be to reverse a natural process, to destroy, as is said, the autonomy of Canada. Those are two very familiar arguments in Canada at this day. They are very important arguments and need to be handled very carefully. I think it is perfectly true that Canadian history has grown in that way. I don't think any one is to blame for its doing so. There were people in England who stated quite consistently that their first business was to keep the Empire together, and that these extensions of self-government might not be good for their purposes. There were people in Canada, on the other hand, who saw the immediate needs and saw that local control would suit them better than anything else. It was really a controversy between two rights, not two wrongs. At any moment in the development of self-government we can, as conscious people and agents, say that development of self-government has gone far enough. There are still some common purposes represented by the Imperial Government. Instead of taking these over and bringing them across the ocean into Canada, we shall enter the Imperial Government and carry it on. We can scarcely regard our history as a binding power from which there is no escape. We are not on an inclined plane where we cannot stop. These things must be considered on their merits. It might have been a perfectly good policy to take over the post-office in Canada, but it might not be the best thing to take over foreign affairs. So, as to the number of Canadians on Imperial Councils, Mr. Bourassa has said, and I think perfectly truly, that sooner or later Canadians would have to be represented in these Councils. The difficulty with Mr. Bourassa is that if you gave him representation, he might not wish to take it. We all agree that Canadians must be represented in these Imperial Councils, but they can