Wake up, Canada! : Reflections on vital national issues

Dedication

To the Editors

of Canadian Newspapers and Periodicals:

My Dear Fellow Craftsmen,

Preface

1 REGRETFULLY realize that this is a scolding, preaching, fault-finding sort of book, only mildly constructive. And Canada is not used to having her institutions libelled in book form. In Great Britain, on the other hand, every week or so, some unlicensed crank writes a volume on how to run the Empire, which, of course, no one ever takes seriously. The patronage and encouragement of this literary Hyde Park speaks volumes for the patriotism of British publishers! However, the precedent is now set in Canada, for better or for worse.

There seems to be, somewhere, an unwritten law to the effect that no man shall write a book on any subject upon which he is not a recognised authority. This rule, of course, is frequently and painfully violated. It is going to be flagrantly transgressed in this case. Much of what appears in the following pages has doubtless been said before, and probably much more effectively than I am able to say it. The whole contents are merely random reflections on leading political and social questions of the day. If I have any apology to offer for inflicting these upon the public in book form, it is, that I have perhaps enjoyed somewhat exceptional opportunities, in the course of a wildly varied career, of observing many of these problems from more than one angle.

viii WAKE UP, CANADA !

It will be obvious to those who are sufficiently interested to read the following pages, that it is not the mission of this volume to submit cut and dried remedies for the various ills and handicaps, social, political, and economic, under which Canada labours. Many of them are common to all countries. My object is rather to bring some of our problems to the attention of thinking people, to contribute in a mild measure to intelligent discussion and to spur into action those whose responsibility it is to solve them. But, above everything, it is my earnest ambition to rouse Canadian men and women from their present apathetic attitude in regard to the politics and administration of the country and to kindle an intelligent interest in the great questions of the day. The field is so broad, however, that many patriotic intellects must lend their efforts towards exploring it and bringing useful suggestions to the surface.

I love this Canada of ours — this clean, strenuous, blessed, young country, seemingly so enormously distant from the slimy, unwholesome social mess of Europe. But one cannot shut one's eyes to the evidences of unrest apparent even here. It is the main purpose of this book to contribute, to a modest extent, towards the awakening of Canada to a sense of her responsibilities and opportunities. We must look past errors bravely in the face and energetically turn our attention to setting the house in order. Herein will lie Canada's salvation and her ability to fulfil her God-given destiny of becoming the haven of refuge for oppressed people, and for those

PREFACE ix

adventurous spirits who chafe at the restraints of older civilizations.

When a book is written in the first person it is apparently customary to explain and apologize. I have so offended, but see no necessity for doing either in this case. I have drawn somewhat copiously upon my own personal experience, deeming such information to be the most reliable and convincing. Apart, however, from this consideration, I cannot tell my story effectively in any other way.

C.W.P.

Western Stock Ranches, Calgary, Alberta, April, 1919. '

Contents

Chapter Page

Preface

The aftermath of war — A record of democracy's efforts — Democracy and anarchy — Liberty and license — The line of true progress — The ideal democracy and the new spirit — The moral appeal — The surrender of self-determination.

Chapter One

THE amazing cataclysm into which a peaceful world was precipitated in 1914 ultimately gained such proportions that the normal life of the individual the world over was affected to a greater or lesser extent. Carefully treasured economic theories have been blasted into utter oblivion. Nations are drifting like rudderless ships on the high seas. Patching here and mending there, some hope to sail into safe havens. Others lie bleeding and mangled while irrepressible mobs put to the torch the outward and visible evidences of centuries of slow and laborious progress and civilization.

If one does not misread all the signs and tokens, the end of this bloody war is ushering in a new era all over the civilized world. We shall be taught to renounce many things that the present generation has most admired in men; wealth, power, position and fame, and to estimate men and things at their true worth. The drone will be an outcast. He probably will not have the wealth to enable him to lead the drone's existence. The State will require it. The man who does things will be the leader — not the man whose only claim to distinction is that he made a happy choice of parents.

The conviction is forcing itself on thoughtful observers, that the past world struggle and its aftermath is less a trial of strength between the autocratic and democratic ideas of Government, than a fire trial of democracy itself. The overwhelming opinion of the world is, of course, against autocracy, which is absolutely out of tune with the times. A limited population, born and educated under autocratic rule of a reasonably advanced humanitarian and orderly sort, was apparently prepared, or coerced, to fight for its perpetuation and possible extension, but victory or defeat would not have affected public opinion elsewhere, to any great extent, as to the merits of such a system. That it was efficient, viewed as a machine, is not disputed, but democratic people demand responsible institutions with all the faults inherent in majority rule. The world has now decided, that autocracies must go, not necessarily because they are inefficient, but because they are irresponsible.

What about the world's democracies? Have they fulfilled the reasonable expectations of the early pioneers of liberty, fraternity and equality? Have they abolished sweated and child labour and all the other abominations of our industrial system? If these conditions have from time to time been ameliorated, has it been by the voluntary action of the State or by the power of organized labour foreing its demands on reluctant democracy? Has democracy abolished the pest-ridden tenements of our great cities? Can, in fact, democracy show, that the status of the common people has been higher and better under its beneficent rule than it was in the autocratic countries we have just defeated? Let us look the facts straight in the face. Let us also remember that democracy has, in some countries, abolished an hereditary aristocracy and has substituted therefor a plutocracy, with swollen fortunes made out of the sweat of the brow of its citizens. The aristocrat was generally actuated by the noblesse oblige principle and frequently rendered patriotic public services. The plutocrat, on the other hand, has for his own selfish purposes, debauched our public life and even spread the net of graft among the people's representatives. Are we the better for the change? Democracy — government for the people, by the people — has been on the job for over a century and, frankly, has it proven so vastly superior as a political scheme, that the transformation from autocracy to our alleged advanced system is merely a matter of form? Do we not detect in the liberated countries an ever-swelling rejection of the sort of democracy that has in the past satisfied our consciences? We apparently cannot comprehend, that any nation just emerging from the darkness of autocracy should contain any considerable element of people who would hesitate to adopt holus-bolus our own scheme of Government. Yet, it is so. And not alone is it so, but these new notions are not confined to the conquered. They are being rapidly assimilated among the conquerors. Read and digest the following from a speech by a Canadian at Toronto :

We advocate the dictatorship of the people or proletariat. Under this creed society must be turned upside down, the will of the workers being imposed on the "bourgeoise," or ruling class. The State, as it exists today, must be destroyed, and with it must go overboard law and all the political institutions of the country, for we maintain that these exist only to oppress the poor and protect the ruling class. In place of the State the Bolshevist places the revolution organization of the workers. The first duty of that body is to dispossess the capitalists, take control of all key industries, land, mines, railways, means of postal and telegraph communication and the new-papers, and run them for the benefit of the workers and the extension of the Bolshevist system. The land is to be parcelled out and given to the peasants free of tenure. The factories are taken over without compensation to owners or shareholders, to be run by shop committees. All profits from whatever source are to be administered by a Central Revolutionary Committee until such time as they are handed over to the workers. The Bolshevists do not argue, we lay down a dogma that the workers at all costs are supreme, and to attain this end all means are justifiable. .

And thus the Bolshevist is endeavouring to create a limbo large and broad, since called "The Paradise of Fools."

The conflict of arms in the cradle of modern civilization has mercifully ceased. But where heroes have gallantly spilled their life blood in defence of all that makes life sweet and desirable, drivelling anarchy is rearing its leering, vacant face. Frightened Europe stands aghast. History records no precedent. Has the world been delivered from the madman of Potsdam only to be handed over to, and be destroyed by, a wild beast, nursed unaware at her own bosom? Is such a fate the inexorable doom of mankind? Lies here the secret and mainspring of destroyed ancient civilizations?

The world was prepared for far-reaching social changes, brought about in the orderly, conventional and constitutional manner to which nations had been accustomed under our highly organized scheme of life. But the wanton destruction and bloody orgies of the Maximalist on his westward march in Europe, have impressed all mankind with a feeling of utter horror and fear of the spreading of this social plague to peaceful spots, that have hitherto been thought secure against the bloody doctrine of the "long-haired man and the shorthaired woman."

Has the death knell of Europe sounded? Will the long talons of anarchism grip her by the throat and destroy her civilization? Shall we, on this side of the Atlantic, wholly escape the taint of the dismal creed? These are questions which every thinking man is asking during this unstable period in the world's history. European countries are at a disadvantage. Eighty per cent, of the people have little or nothing to lose in any violent social upheaval. The remaining twenty per cent, own it all. Those in the former category may be tempted to try any creed, any experiment, and, moblike, be carried away by it.

Let us not, however, for a moment imagine that

Bolshevism is something copied from a comic opera, — that there is no rational, dominating idea behind the seemingly crazy performances of the adherents of this new and extraordinary creed. If there were not, it would simply subside by its own efforts and might properly be treated as an unusually widespread outbreak of lunacy. What is it? In conversation with a gentleman, an American, recently returned from Petrograd where he had occupied an official position in behalf of his own country, he expressed to the writer his utter lack of sympathy with the much persecuted bourgeoisie of Russia. It was bad and reactionary to the core. He was most pessimistic about the whole political prospect in that country. He was apparently convinced, that the elements of true democracy were not in the bourgeoisie of Russia and could not be instilled into that class. Their point of view was utterly and hopelessly at variance with that of the humbler classes.

This statement tells its own story. The Maximalist has no intention of spending a century or two in educating the classes. His creed is death and destruction and the rearing of a new structure of State on the ruins of the old order of society. It is inhuman and cruel, but there is method and purpose in the seeming madness. It is devoid of all the finer instincts and lofty aspirations of our modern civilization; it is ruthless and it is relentless; it is something we never pictured even in our most horrid night-mares. It is a world scarlet with blood and fire!

On this side of the Atlantic we may escape the rocks and reefs of the older civilizations of Europe. In Canada and the United States, while individual fortunes may in many cases be enormous, the rank and file are not devoid of property. Two-thirds of the farmers in the United States own their holdings. In Canada the proportion is much greater. In the smaller towns and cities the labourer frequently owns his home. The future holds greater promise over here. The industrious bricklayer of to-day is often the successful contractor of to-morrow. Such conditions are unfavourable to violent reconstruction. They are not necessarily unfavourable to far-reaching social reform.

If we in Canada escape the doom of the countries of Central Europe, let us, in all humility, confess our past sins of omission and commission, and determine to use our talents in a manner more worthy of the destiny of this great virgin country, that the Almighty has handed over to us in trust for future generations. We are only the builders of the foundation. Let us see that it is so laid that the finished structure, founded on solid rock, may one day rear itself proudly against the sky to the admiration of all nations. Our responsibility is great, almost as great as our opportunities. May we do justice to them !

If Bolshevism devoured us, it would be perhaps only retributive justice for a century of soft living, of selfish ambitions, of grinding poverty here and ostentatious luxury there; the prostitution and caricaturing of the stage, "jazz band" music, our lascivious, erotic literature, and monstrous, degenerate modern schools of art, of forgetting to be "our brother's keeper" — of general failure to use our new-found political liberty in the interests of humanity, education and arts, and of misusing it for the promotion of private greed and in riotous living.

Democracy has been pulled up with a sharp turn. Democratic Europe has heedlessly proceeded on its way, lulled and soothed into foolish security by the comfortable conviction that all was well. Were they not in Great Britain, for instance, good citizens of a free country? feut democracies built on a social system that has rendered it possible for a few to accumulate fabulous fortunes while multitudes have lived in misery, tilth and starvation — a social system that has given into the hands of the few, however deserving, hard working and superior they may be, the ownership or stewardship of all the things that represent power over the fate of the majority — a social system which, by virtually denying the average man a stake in the community, has gradually produced a proletariat devoid of all sense of responsibility for the maintenance of the existing order — such a democracy, I say, is perhaps in greater danger of utter annihilation than the vilest of autocracies. It rests not on a solid foundation, but on a veritable volcano.

Rational human beings, however extreme their views, are not sighing for the day of absolute social and material equality. Only the distorted mind can picture a race cast in a uniform mould — physically and intellectually. But the democratic nations of the world, including Canada, must approach equality of opportunity much — very much — closer than they have in the past. If we cannot find the way or cannot rise to the sacrifice — God help us all and our democracies. Short will be the shrift!

Individual benevolence by the possessors of swollen fortunes — restitution to society — will not meet the case. The breadwinner is clamouring for steady employment and for protection against the economic consequences of illness, accident and death. He asks for bread and he is given books — libraries of them! These things cannot be remedied by a gradual process of compassionate voluntary effort; nor even by wholesale disgorging. The individual citizen of the most ideal democracy stands revealed as a selfish, grasping, predatory animal. We must, in fact, be protected against each other. It is primarily a job for State treatment.

The gradual development, among the nations of the world, of all the vices and evils to which ancient Rome ultimately fell a victim, is not a pleasant retrospect. In the larger cities of Canada and the United States, where the social unrest is most noticeable, the past twenty years have been a period of "easy" money, and reckless, offensive spending. Business men have developed wolfish instincts. Many of our statesmen — the noblest calling of all — have degenerated into "practical"

politicians. The gratification of social ambition has been, amongst our women of the "classes," one of the main objects in life, with the aping of the habits of the very wealthy and so on down the list. The showy "front" has been a subject of emulation. The expenditure on personal adornment must surely have made our grandmothers turn in their graves. And our smart establishments! The modest carriage and pair has been replaced by fleets of expensive motor cars. Haughty, pale-faced children, who would be vastly benefited by fresh air and healthful exercise, are carried to school in luxurious limousines with uniformed chauffeurs, passing the offspring of the mechanic, trudging through the snow, and casting envious eyes on these darlings of fortune.

Let us offer up devout gratitude, that grim war at last stepped in and laid its heavy hand upon our heedless society, spurred us to action, and brought out all that was best and noblest within us. The social butterfly went to work. The spendthrift stopped spending. Weary years of ceaseless worry and heavy responsibility opened our eyes to the worth-while things in life. We see and read more understanding^ now that the spirit of charity and toleration has descended upon us. We realize that there is enough and plenty in this good old world of ours, so that we may all have the necessaries of life and some of its comforts and luxuries. And many of us even dimly perceive, that we all came naked into this existence, whether in cottage or mansion, and will leave it in the same condition; that no class among us is God's chosen — a peculiar people ; but that we are all just very ordinary, average, miserable sinners, whose duty and privilege it is to wander through life, lending a hand to help the weaker brother over rough places, faithfully performing our allotted tasks and, finally, making our exit, dwelling in our last moments with satisfaction only upon the sum of our services to others. Upon our ability to see these things clearly may depend our future status as a nation.

At this period, the whole scheme of democratic government seems to drift between Scylla and Charybdis. During the past decades, nations have apparently progressed farther in the field of political freedom than in education and fitness for the great responsibilities incidental to citizenship in the ideal democracy. It has been well said, that the step from pure democracy to tyrannous autocracy is surprisingly easily made. The proletariat calls out loudly for the inauguration of the Social State. It is mistakenly being regarded as synonymous with the widest political emancipation, with which it has absolutely nothing to do. They have it in Russia. How do you like it? Wherein lies the difference between Kaiser Wilhelm and Trotsky? Bismarck has often been characterized as the most advanced and practical socialist of his time. And he was. Germany had unemployment insurance and all the rest of it. It was almost a socialized state — and yet a nation of abject, cringing slaves.

This idealization of the socialized state has become a menace to civilization. We do not seem to comprehend, except in the haziest manner, that consistent socialization is absolutely incompatible with individual liberty of action, the boon most highly prized by the true democrat. We see it clearly demonstrated all around us. The multiplication of Government functions, promoted largely by our tendency towards the socialized State, is rapidly driving our modern democracies into tyranny. We are denied, right and left, the basic privilege of self-determination — the very cornerstone of President Wilson's fourteen points now accepted by the Peace Congress at Versailles. The whole continent of America has recently been driven into a policy of prohibition of the use of all intoxicants, by the action of the State. I express no opinion on the merits or demerits of the policy itself; I am criticizing only the underlying principle. The "Verboten" sign is becoming an increasingly familiar and conspicuous spectacle within democracies.

This complete surrender of self-determination and individual liberty, which is involved in the socialized State; this submission to being drynursed and shepherded from birth to death by a paternal governmental authority; this smug wholesale insuring against all the calamities and vicissitudes of life; this tender shielding and guarding of the individual from all the temptations that beset red-blooded men and women — what sort of a race of human beings will it breed? Shall we not lose all our powers of initiative and foresight, our capacity for fighting, bravely and manfully, against the odds and evils of life? Shall we not become a nation of hypocrites, secretly breaking irksome restrictions? Shall we not finally become imbued with a contempt for all laws as a result of failure to rigidly enforce some of them? In a measure we are deliberately attempting to circumvent the operation of the eternal law of the survival of the fittest. We are trying by Act of Parliament, to prevent the weakling from utterly destroying himself, and every time he discovers a new way of attempting it, which he inevitably will, we pass a new Act of Parliament! Is there no longer within us any response to the spiritual appeal? Have we not reached the point in democracy when the principal business of the State appears to be to busy itself with our petty vices? The fate of great political parties ought not to hang on such issues. And now we are promised a crusade against cigarettes, two per cent, beer and cent-a-point bridge! Is this the higher civilization?

Chapter Two

CANADA is a country of dual language and dual nationality. Under the terms of Confederation, certain rights were guaranteed the French Canadians in respect of the official use of the French language. That fact seems to worry a great many people. A literature has grown up around this question, and some otherwise sane people seem to see in this equitable, fair and highly satisfactory arrangement, a menace to Canada and a brake on progress. It never seems to occur to these people, that the situation is very far from unique. Belgium has two languages, Switzerland has three. Every country in Europe has dialects almost as strange as a foreign tongue. I have met at least one Welshman, born and bred on the tight little island, who could hardly speak a word of English. Certainly, if we have a language problem it can only be due to narrow prejudice, bad management, and unscrupulous political agitation. It seems almost superfluous to state the fact, that a strong, virile nation can be successfully created out of peoples speaking different tongues. In many ways a dual language is very advantageous or could be made so. If every child in Canada spoke English and French with equal fluency, the country would unquestionably be the gainer. Art, literature and general culture, would be immeasurably promoted to the vast benefit of us all. Amalgamation of tribes and races into nations is a process that has been going merrily on as far back as recorded history is available. On the surface, there seems to be nothing particular to worry about in our case. The thing is to study each other's point of view, to be mutually sympathetic and, above all, to practise courtesy and toleration.

The English Canadian has no particular quarrel with his French brother. One can scarcely dignify the impatience and intolerance at times plainly exhibited by both sides as a racial quarrel. I am referring now to the average citizen and not to the comparatively small number of English speaking, bigoted Protestant agitators, who are not in any sense representative of average public opinion. The English opposition to dual-language is rather one based on certain very practical objections. The dual-language is simply regarded as an intolerable nuisance, and as an exceedingly expensive and unnecessary nuisance. Public records have to be translated and printed in both languages, in most cases, quite as a matter of form and with no practical benefit to anyone. Official correspondence must be conducted in both languages. I well remember the perennial question by the solitary French member of the old Territorial Assembly as to whether the proceedings of the House would be published in French and the Premier's grave reply, to the effect that the Federal authorities had not seen fit to provide funds specially for the purpose! The French are very persistent.

Canada is quite satisfied that Quebec should be, and should remain, a French province, but the people of Ontario and the West are naturally loath to encourage language complications. It seems absurd to them, that a small minority should so persistently endeavour to impose its views on a vast majority and, when not completely successful, assume the martyr attitude. There is, of course, intolerance on both sides, but the French would perhaps be well advised to accept reasonable compromise instead of standing out for the whole pound of flesh. If the Province of Quebec has not retaliated, within her own boundaries, it is very much to the credit of the French element there. Their attitude should be a lesson to the other provinces.

It is not quite fair to compare conditions in Danish Schleswig and German Poland with those prevailing in Canada as I have seen done. Germany prohibited absolutely the use of the native tongue at all public meetings and also adopted a ruthless policy of persecution and deportation. Those were the main grievances. I have yet to hear, that any obstacle has ever been placed in the way of the use of the French language anywhere in Canada or any oppressive, or coercive, measures adopted to force French-Canadians to use the English tongue. They can talk French at any time to their hearts' content. Also, there is no objection to private or church schools in Canada teaching in any language they desire. That was not the case in Schleswig or Poland.

We also have a school question in Canada intimately related to the language controversy. We have always had a school question. Our politicians would be lonely without it. The French are Roman Catholics and want religious instruction in the schools. We Protestants do not. But perhaps we are wrong. I, for one, rather think we are. The French can do as they like within Quebec and they do it. But Mother Church follows the "habitant" across the border into other provinces and claims the same privileges, and then the fat is in the fire and the fight begins. It is disturbing, but after all it is very parochial. We are apt to lose our sense of proportion. The fate of empires does not hang on such issues.

The war brought the controversy into the limelight as a national issue. French Canada would not play the game. One pretext after the other was urged in support of this attitude, with every reason except the true reason, which is, that Jean Baptiste is not a fighting man. He is essentially domestic, and the spirit of adventure does not exist in the present generation of French-Canadians. Leave his aged mother, or his wife and children, and go across the ocean to offer up his life for a principle, and a dollar and ten cents a day? Did one ever hear of such madness? When conscription was delicately hinted at, the French press went into hysterics. Rapine and rebellion, battle, murder and sudden death would be the inevitable answer in Quebec. The streets of the cities would flow with the blood of the oppressors. When the order ultimately went into effect, Jean, like the simple, decent, law-abiding citizen that he is, came into the fold like a lamb and cheerfully went to the Front. That is, any stray Jean who had been utterly unable to satisfy a very, very complaisant board that he really ought to be exempted, which he, by the way, seldom failed to do.

French Quebec's contribution towards winning the war was, therefore, not conspicuous. The French-Canadian units that went across, however, covered themselves with glory, as the entire French-Canadian population would doubtless have done, had it been there. The fact of the matter is, that the habitant, the real French-Canadian, lives in a sixteenth century atmosphere. Quebec is his country, and Monsieur le Cure is a deputy god. Great Britain and France actually mean no more to him than Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan — and that is nothing at all. The Province of Quebec should really educate this man and make a real citizen of him. There is no better raw material anywhere.

In the meanwhile, let there be no illusions in this matter. The guttersnipes and sweepings of the slums of Montreal, even the ranting college professors, hysterical politicians and radical newspaper editors of the French element, do not represent French Canada. We are apt to think they do, and they think so themselves, but they really do not. Even Ottawa, which ought to know better, trembled before these men. No national question whatever could be decided without deep consideration as to how Quebec would take it. The small group of French-speaking Ministers was always able to block any plan or policy, no matter how meritorious, by a mere intimation that Quebec would not like it. The cabinet soon became frightened at its own shadow. It was almost completely dominated by this element. In course of time, the French Ministers and members naturally began to take themselves seriously. The balance of power depended on Quebec. No government could lightly ignore this situation.