You See, That Late Unfashionable War[3] Was Very Real To Canada.

She sent several men to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than a crowded one.

When, from her point of view, they have died for no conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss - on the ship and elsewhere - whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted - really these people have viciously long memories! - the five-year campaign of abuse against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.

[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.]

Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard.

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