red owing to his secret
knowledge of revolutionary propaganda among the Vancouver Hindus, who
were posing as patriots and British subjects. The fact that many
thousands of Sikhs and Hindus had just been hurried across Canada in
trains with blinds down to fight for the empire in Europe added tragic
complexity to an already impossible situation.

The leaders of the Hindu party in Canada had already realized that more
immigration was not advisable till they had stronger backing of public
opinion in Canada, and a campaign of publicity was begun from Nova Scotia
to the Pacific Coast. Churches, women's missionary societies, women's
clubs, men's clubs were addressed by Hindu leaders from one end of Canada
to the other. It did not improve the temper of some of these leaders
posing in flowing garments of white as mystic saints before audiences of
women to know that Hopkinson, the secret agent, was on their trail in the
shadow with proofs of criminal records on the part of these same leaders.
These criminal records Hopkinson would willingly have exposed had the
Imperial government not held his hand. When I was in Vancouver he called
to see me and promised me a full exposure of the facts, but before
speaking cabled for permission to speak. Permission was flatly refused,
and I was told that I was investigating things altogether too deeply. I
can see the secret agent's face yet--as he sat bursting with facts
repressed by Imperial order--a solemn, strong, relentless man, sad and
savage with the knowledge he could not use. Without Hopkinson's aid, it
was not difficult to get the facts. Canada is a country of party
government. One party had just been ousted from power, and another party
had just come in. While I was waiting for permission from Ottawa to
obtain facts in the open, information came to me voluntarily with proofs
through the wife of a former secret agent.

It did not make things easier for Hopkinson that the whole dispute as to
Hindu immigration was relegated into that doubtful resort of all
ambiguous politics--"the twilight zone"--or the doubtful borderland where
provincial powers end and federal powers begin and Imperial powers
intervene. England was shoving the burden of decision on the Dominion,
and the Dominion was shoving the burden on the Province of British
Columbia, and to evade responsibility each government was shuttling the
thing back and forward, weaving a tangle of hate and misunderstanding
which c