n flag
on the pyramids had taken a glass too much. He began haranguing the
street-car. "So that's the old Can-a-day flag," said he. "You jus'
wait till to-morrow and, boys, you'll see another flag above that thar
school 'ouse!"

Now a Scotchman is vera' serious. The Scotch trustee gave one
glowering look at that drunken prophet; and he rang the street-car
bell; and he went at the patter of a dead run to the polling place; and
for the first time in his life he voted, not Whig, not free trade, not
reciprocity and Laurier, but Tory and high tariff. [1]

It should be added here that the tariff reductions on food under
President Wilson have justified Canada's rejection of reciprocity.
Canadian farm products have gained freer access to the American market
without a quid pro quo.

[1] Opponents of reciprocity in the United States made skilful use of
Canadian touchiness on such matters, and not all such expressions as
that quoted above were spontaneous.--THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER VI

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH

For a hundred years England's colonies have been distinctively
dependencies--self-governing dependencies, if you will, in the case of
Canada and Australia--but distinctively dependent on the Mother Country
for protection from attack by land and sea. Has the day come when
these colonies, are to be, not lesser, but greater nations--offshoots
of the parent stock but transcending in power and wealth the parent
stock--a United Kingdom of the Outer Meres, becoming to America and
Australasia what Great Britain has been to Europe?

Ten years ago this question would have been considered the bumptious
presumption of flamboyant fancy. It isn't so considered to-day.
Rather than a flight of fancy, the question is forced on thinking minds
by the hard facts of the multiplication table. Between 1897 and 1911
there came to Canada 723,424 British colonists; and since 1911 there
have come half a million more. At the outbreak of the war settlers of
purely British birth were pouring into Canada at the rate of two
hundred thousand a year. A continuation of this immigration means that
in half a century, not counting natural increase, there will be as many
colonists of purely British birth in Canada as there are Americans west
of the Mississippi, or as there were Englishmen in England in the days
of Queen Elizabeth. It means more--one-fourth of the United Kingdom
will have been transplanted overseas. If there be any doubt