"national policies". Many
of them have very little to do with national citizenship. Most of them
sketch out milleniums that are never realized. We are a people of
extremisms. When national prosperity is the objective we tolerate, and
even idolize, any man who is bold and big enough to capture the country
with his special-interest programme. Then the delirium is over, heyday
is done, and the nation wakes up to classify as public plunderers the
very men whom it once regarded as the economic saviours of the country.

Our faculty of national criticism is not as yet strongly developed.
Thank heaven, we are not cynical; but it is better to be a hopeful cynic
than a disgruntled idealist. Men will arise with specious programmes by
means of which they can hypnotize a group and aim at capturing the
country. Progress carries on by means of such men and such groups. But
the devil himself stands behind the stage bush to prod these zealots into
the limelight and the next moment to lead the claque in the gallery. We
are carried away by the act, afterwards find that we have been duped and
hold indignation meetings after the show is safely ten miles down the
line.

Like all other nations we have had our share of "the new time coming".
During the war we had all the old parties dead and buried along with
patronage and race cries and public graft. But while the preacher was
busy over the funeral rites a number of chief mourners were somewhere
"making hay". A nation's adversity is too often some man's opportunity.
In moneymaking this is even worse than in politics. It is too easy to
shout and to shed tears. We deplore the past, suspect the future and
work hard to make ourselves solid for the present.

Many men in Canada do not regard public life as public service. There is
little or no preparation for doing the nation's business. Men are
log-rolled into Parliament and pitchforked into Cabinets. The work they
are expected to do has little or no relation to the work for which nature
and experience intended them. It is regarded a simpler matter to
administer a great State department than to manage a big industry.

Ottawa is the natural objective of all those who "want" something. When
interests camp on the trail of Governments and of Parliament, the
interest of the nation is going to suffer--and it always has. We are
paying in taxes now for the lobbying that went on ten years ago. No
Government is ever considered so pat