esting secure under
the Monroe Doctrine. The two million Americans in the West may be
expected to advocate the same policy. The British and the Canadians of
British descent in Canada may be expected to take an aggressive stand for
active self-defense; for defense may be one of Canada's next big problems.

Up to the present, Canadians have considered it a superiority that their
constitution--the British North America Act--could be so easily amended.
As long as Canada is peopled by Canadians, it is an advantage to work
under a constitution that may be modified to suit the growing need of a
growing nation, but one is constrained to ask what if Galicians and
Germans ever acquired the balance of voting power in Canada? There are
half as many German-born Germans in the United States as there are
native-born Canadians in Canada. What if such a tide of German
immigration came to Canada? Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage
that the country's constitution could be so easily amended by the
Imperial Parliament? Or more striking still, suppose the Hindu, a
British subject, began peopling Western Canada by the million. Suppose
the Hindu, a British subject, voted in Canada for a change in the
constitution! Can one conceive for one minute of the Imperial government
refusing to amend the British North American Act? Canadians sometimes
refer to the American Constitution as too fixed and inelastic for modern
conditions. They sometimes wonder how certain famous constitutional
lawyers could make a living without the American Constitution to
interpret and argue before the Supreme Court, but Americans and Canadians
are to-day working out from different angles a great world experiment in
self-government. It remains to be seen which experiment will stand the
stress of world-convulsing changes. We need not theorize. Time will
arbitrate.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

I

Some one has said that the life of a nation is but the shadow of the
units composing it; or the life of a nation is but the replica of the
life of the individuals in it. Massed figures on gross exports are but
the total thrift of a multitude of toiling men. Wheat production to
feed a hungry empire is but one farmer's tireless vigilance multiplied
by hundreds of thousands of other farmers. What manner of man is the
Canadian behind all these figures attesting material prosperity? What
manner of being is the Canadian woman, his partner? Is