or her food supply? And if it were to
the advantage of a hostile power to cripple Canada, could she be
conquered? Any one familiar with Canada will answer without a moment's
hesitation. She could be attacked. Her coastal cities could be laid
waste as the cities of Belgium. To reach the interior of Canada, an
enemy must do one of three things, all next to impossible: penetrate
the St. Lawrence--a treacherous current--for a thousand miles exposed
to submarine and mine and attack from each side; cross the United
States and so violate American sovereignty, cross the Rockies to reach
inland. Any one of these feats is as impossible as the conquest of
Switzerland or the Scottish Highlands. Canada could be attacked and
laid waste; she could be financially ruined by attack and set back
fifty years in her progress; but she could no more be conquered than
Napoleon conquered Russia. The conquest would be at a cost to destroy
the conqueror, and the conqueror could no more stay than Napoleon
stayed in Moscow. Canada has a vast, an illimitable back country--the
area of all Russia; and to the lakes and wild rivers and mountain
passes of that country her people are born and bred. To her climate
her people are born and bred. The climate would take care of the rest.
You can't exactly despatch motors and motor guns down swamps for a
hundred miles and over cataracts and through mountain passes on the
perpendicular. Canada's back country is her perpetual city of refuge.
Nevertheless, the day of dependence on false security is past.
National status implies national defense, and at time of writing the
indications are that the whole military system of the Dominion will be
put on a new basis, training to patriotism and defense and service from
the public school up through the university.

"Then what becomes of your co-eds and woman movement?" a militarist
asked.

The question can be answered in the words of a great doctor--more men
die on the field of battle from lack of women nurses than ever die from
the bullet of the enemy. The time seems to have come for woman's place
on the firing line. That womanhood which gives of life to create life
now claims the right to go out on the field of danger to conserve and
protect life; and in the embodiment of military training in public
education that, too, may be part of Canada's new national defense.

When an admiral's fleet is sunk within ten days' sail of Victoria and
Vancouver, Laurier