ll be to deal with relations with foreign
countries.... We have now reached a standard as a nation which
necessitates the establishment of a Department of External Affairs.'
On Sir Robert Borden's accession to power one of his first steps was to
increase the importance of this department by giving it a minister as
well as a deputy, attaching the portfolio to the office of the prime
minister. For other purposes special envoys were sent, as when Mr
Fielding negotiated trade relations in France and in the United States,
or Mr Lemieux arranged a compromise with the government of Japan upon
the immigration issue. In these cases the British ambassador was
nominally associated with the Canadian envoy. Even this formal {287}
limitation was lacking in the case of the conventions effected with
France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Italy in 1909-10, by negotiation
with their consuls in Ottawa. Finally, in the Waterways Treaty with
the United States, the international status of Canada was for the first
time formally recognized in the provision that the decision to submit
to arbitration matters other than those regarding boundary waters
should be made on the one hand by the President and Senate of the
United States, and on the other by the Governor-General in Council, the
Cabinet of the Dominion.

At the close of this period, then, every phase of our foreign relations
so far as they concerned the United States, and an increasingly large
share of our foreign relations with other powers, were under Canadian
control. It remained true, however, that Canada had no voice in
determining peace and war. In other words, it was with Britain's
neighbours, rather than with Canada's neighbours, that any serious war
was most likely to come. Diplomatic policy and the momentous issue of
peace or war in Europe or Asia were determined by the British Cabinet.
In this field alone equality was as yet to seek. The {288} consistent
upholder of Dominion autonomy contended that here, too, power and
responsibility would come in the same measure as military and naval
preparation and participation in British wars. Just as Canada secured
a voice in her foreign commercial relations as soon as her trade
interests and industrial development gave her commercial weight, so a
share in the last word of diplomacy might be expected to come almost
automatically as Dominion and Commonwealth built up military and naval
forces, or took part in oversea wars.

In