Everything Meets There; France, The Jealous Partner Of England's
Glory By Land And Sea For Eight Hundred Years; England, Bewildered
As
usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other
people, destined to break from England
As soon as the French peril was
removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable
trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the
background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. Mercury, making beautiful
and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River.
For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of
beautiful things - including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing
is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is,
happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the
battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and
association would be one of the most beautiful in our world.
Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the
thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped
car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble
with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides
of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding,
dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the
Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with
coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into
the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the
full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and
cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold
passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old
So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders
when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was his Inner
Circle - the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to
stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each
feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be
Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta
in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the
Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for
the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the
river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the
South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.)
Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically
he said he loathed the city - but it was his.
'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?'
'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later
that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear
round the Empire.
A PEOPLE AT HOME
An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down
to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little
excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men
called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble
their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a
steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea
might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to
listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the
same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The
whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The
Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many
interesting questions - from practical forestry to State mints - all set
out by experts.
Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work.
Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational
whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art
of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of
colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to
speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make
good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on
brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to
the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry
the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning
arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial
orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm,
hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of
first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift
flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in
Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to
Suns, Moons, and Mountains - touches of grandiosity and ceremonial
invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive
stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it,
rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies
open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself
as the speakers.
So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During
the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view,
and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the
Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot
countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but
rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge.
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